Non-Mexican immigrants swamp Texas border city

[ConfuZed]

EAGLE PASS, Texas (Reuters) - The number of illegal immigrants from Central America and Brazil caught crossing into this Texas border city jumped threefold in the past year as they rush to exploit a legal loophole, U.S. authorities said.

The U.S. Border Patrol has nabbed 15,195 non-Mexican migrants crossing over the Rio Bravo around Eagle Pass in the past eight months, a rise of almost 240 percent on the same period last year, officials said on Monday.

Agents say what they call "OTMs" -- "other than Mexican migrants" -- now account for 90 percent of all migrant detentions in the sweltering trade and ranching hub of 40,000 people. That is up from the 5 percent to 10 percent nationwide normally recorded by the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Officials in Eagle Pass attribute the dramatic spike to news filtering out in countries in Central and South America that U.S. authorities are unable...<More>

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2005-05-30T223440Z_01_N30566036_RTRIDST_0_USREPORT-IMMIGRATION-USA-DC.XML

[Carolab]

1. Great. Does that mean we can to to their countries to work? n/t

[TriMetFan]

2. Well we have been doing it to Mexico

for many many years now. I even worked there when I ran out of money.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Also, some were stranded in Costa Rica, headed for the U.S.

Posted on Tue, May. 31, 2005




COSTA RICA


Message in a bottle turns into lifesaver

A message in a bottle saves the lives of 86 refugees off the coast of Costa Rica.

BY BRIAN HARRIS

Special to The Herald


SAN JOSE - Forty-six Ecuadoreans and 40 Peruvians were rescued over the weekend, thanks in part to a message pleading for help cast into the Pacific Ocean in a bottle. Costa Rican authorities and a nonprofit environmental organization cooperated in the rescue near the island of Coco.

A passing fishing boat had noticed the migrants' drifting boat and alerted Costa Rican officials, but the coast guard's vessel was not available. A couple of hours later on Sunday morning, the captain of the long-line Costa Rican fishing boat Rey de Reyes noticed a bottle tied to its fishing lines.

In their desperation, the migrants had tied a soda bottle to one of the long liner's floats with a note inside reading ''Help, please help us,'' the nonprofit organization MarViva reported.

Later that evening, MarViva's boat found the passengers adrift, some 33 miles from Coco. It is an uninhabited island, which is a United Nations World Heritage site and famed for its scientific use in confirming many of Charles Darwin's theories on evolution and species adaptation.

According to the nonprofit organization's spokeswoman Michelle Soto, the migrants reported their boat sailed from the Ecuadorean port of Puerto Montañita early last week, with passengers hoping to make it in to the United States illegally. But when the boat developed mechanical troubles, the crew apparently changed over to another ship, abandoning their human cargo.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/americas/11777023.htm
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