Some have accused Mexican officials of protecting a smuggling ring that brings Cubans to the shores and islands near Cancún.

BY JORGE DOMINGUEZ
Associated Press

CANCUN, Mexico - Mexico has launched an investigation into what some officials say is a people-smuggling ring on the country's resortstudded Caribbean coast that specializes in helping Cubans flee the island.

As unusually wellprovisioned Cubans arrive on the shores and islands near Cancún, some accuse Mexican officials of protecting the trade, which for decades ran largely north from Cuba to Miami.

''There is now an investigation . . . based on a complaint filed in cases where there is a supposition of human trafficking,'' said an official of Mexico's National Immigration Institute who was not authorized to be quoted by name.

The official said ''there very probably could be'' smuggling of Cuban refugees.

Sixty-one Cubans were detained in Mexico in the first quarter of 2006. In 2005, 280 were detained.

But some allege that the smuggled Cubans might not be reflected in official figures because, Mexican officials may be protecting the lucrative smuggling operations -- a charge officials deny.

''Immigration Institute agents and officials control the smuggling of Cuban rafters through Cancún,'' said Laura Martínez Cárdenas, an inspector in the region for Mexico's National Human Rights Commission.

Martínez Cárdenas said officials participated in ``a complex web of complicity with traffickers, in which they receive large sums of money for supplying traffickers with help, transportation and protection.''

Egdar Orozco, the head of the immigration office for the Caribbean coast, said his agents were doing their jobs well, and noted his office does not have the authority to investigate possible people smuggling.

It refers those cases to the Attorney General's Office, which is carrying out the current probe.

In past decades, Cubans would only occasionally drift ashore on Mexico's coast -- usually driven off-course by winds or currents.

''We are concerned and watching this, because it's becoming almost a constant thing,'' the head federal prosecutor in the region, Pedro Ramírez Violante, said of the arrival of Cuban rafters.

''There are things that stand out,'' Ramírez Violante told local media. ``These appear to be boats that are adrift, but people who are left adrift arrive with dehydration, in bad physical shape. These people aren't arriving that way.''

He said that might imply the Cubans had help from smugglers paid to get them close to the coast. Setting them adrift off the Mexican coast would presumably be less dangerous for the traffickers.