Eighteen Cubans "rescued" from Mexican authorities re-surface in US

[Mika]

If they were fleeing Cuba for freedom then why isn't Mexico a good destination for freedom?

Oh, that's right... they're not fleeing Cuba, they intend to collect the perks offered only by the US to Cubans only.

Next stop, Miami.

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/americas/news/article_1412272.php/Eighteen_Cubans_rescued_from_Mexican_authorities_re-surface_in_US

Mexico City - Eighteen of the 33 Cubans who were 'rescued' from Mexican authorities by an armed commando last week have turned up in the US state of Texas, the Mexican Public Prosecutor's Office said Thursday.

The details given to US officials by the migrants themselves partly solved the mystery of their disappearance.

The Cubans explained how a wide range of intermediaries allowed them to escape from Mexican authorities and then to travel to the United States seemingly legally, with documents that were or at least looked real and with money in their pockets.

US government agencies contacted Mexico to say that the Cubans who had originally been detained by Mexican immigration officials were found 'by US authorities on US territory, in good health condition and having suffered no physical damage at all.'

According to US legislation dating back to 1966, Cubans receive automatic residency rights upon arrival on the US mainland.

Mexico, which wants to normalize its relations with Cuba, has threatened to send illegal immigrants back to Cuba.

The Cubans had been picked up by Mexican officials on June 6 along the country's eastern coast, a common beaching point for Cuban refugees who use the route on their way to the United States. Their boats usually take them to the Yucatan peninsula.

However, they disappeared six days later, after being taken by force from Mexican immigration officials as they were being taken by bus to the Tapachula facility in the southern state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala.

The strongmen travelling in two luxury vehicles stopped the bus, forced the seven official escorts and two drivers out of the vehicle and drove off with the occupants under their command, a police spokesman said last week. The empty bus, operated by Mexico's immigration department, was found later.

Mexican authorities said Thursday that they knew nothing of the whereabouts of the remaining Cubans and of three Guatemalans and a Salvadoran citizen who had been travelling with them on the bus.

Nine immigration officials and the two bus drivers were under arrest for questioning. They were believed to have assisted efforts to take the migrants from Mexican authorities.

Two Cuban-Americans were charged with illegally taking the migrants from Cuba to Mexico.

Mexican authorities gave details of the operation based on accounts given by Cuban migrants to US officials after they arrived there. Following the armed rescue in Chiapas - in which at least six masked men armed with rifles took part - the migrants said they were taken to a safe-house in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz.

There, 'they had photographs taken that were stuck on individual sheets of paper bearing the seal of (Mexico's) National Migration Institute.'

With these documents, which ordered their exit from the country, they were then taken to the Veracruz central bus station, divided into groups and given enough money to travel to the United States.

'With the documents handed to them, one of the groups of immigrants who arrived in the United States said they went through two military checkpoints and two migratory filters without trouble, on the way from Veracruz to Reynosa by road on a passenger bus,' the Public Prosecutor's Office said.

[Bacchus39]

1. well, obviously Cuba doesn't offer much for them either or why else would they leave?

the Mexican government does't prevent Mexicans from leaving.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Thanks, Mika. No other national group has a broad offering of material benefits waiting in the U.S.,

and you can be sure, if they did, we'd be so crowded by now we couldn't move.

They never mention the Cubans who return, do they? Interesting.

[Bacchus39]

3. the US certainly has more to offer them than Cuba does

that's for sure.

[Mika]

4. Certainly not the right to freely travel to Cuba to see relatives.

That is certain.

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[Judi Lynn]

5. Feeble. n/t

[EFerrari]

7. LOL

[Mika]

6. Mexican gov't fires officials in migrants case

Mexican gov't fires officials in migrants case
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g2Kjndq48h2afrUp_7lJLIkfJ_nAD91IKEO01

The Mexican government said Friday it has fired two officials who oversaw immigration offices on the Caribbean coast because they contradicted themselves under questioning in the case of 33 Cubans snatched from government custody.

Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino also said that charges have been brought against "a significant number of immigration agents and officials," but he did not specify how many or what those charges were.

Mourino said the two officials — who oversaw immigration offices on the Caribbean coast, where undocumented Cuban migrants increasingly land — were fired "because of the significant number of contradictions and inconsistencies" in their stories about the June 11 assault.

"Whether the investigation results in charges against the regional director and assistant director, their behavior was far from correct, and that is why they were removed," Mourino told reporters.

The undocumented Cubans were taken by armed men from a bus carrying them to a government immigration detention center in southern Mexico. Some of the Cubans were later found in Texas.

Mourino also expressed concern that the migrants were not detained at several checkpoints on their way to the United States.

Mourino said the migrants had falsified immigration papers, suggesting the gunmen were working for smugglers eager to get the Cubans to the United States. According to authorities, the Cubans said they were taken to a safe house in the Gulf port of Veracruz, where the fake documents were made.

Obviously, Mexico doesn't offer the perks that the US gov provides for Cubans only (via the Wet foot/Dry Foot policy and the US Cuban Adjustment Act, as well as a plethora of perks for Cubans only). Cuban migrants are not "escaping" Cuba ... they're coming to America.


-

[Judi Lynn]

8. They got a more luxurious trip here than the Central American and Mexican people who are

escaping Central America and escaping Felipe Calderon in Mexico!

Now that I think of it I can see why El Salvadorans would want to escape from Tony Saca, _Bush puppet!

http://chichicaste.blogcindario.com.nyud.net:8090/ficheros/Politica/lamebotas.jpg http://davidholiday.com.nyud.net:8090/weblog/sacabush.jpg

As you said, the OTHER immigrants who come here have no safety nets, no assortment of material benefits handed to them gratis, as "gifts" from the American taxpayers to support them, make things easier, serve as a cushion against harsh realities.