Pilot project offers flights to Mexico City or Guadalajara, though a lift to the nearest Mexican city is also an option.

SERGIO BUSTOS
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON - Mexican immigrants caught trying to illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona soon will have a choice: a free flight back to their hometowns or a short trip to the nearest city on the Mexican side of the border.
The pilot repatriation project, which begins in July and ends Sept. 30, marks an attempt to stem the wave of illegal immigrants from Mexico and reduce migrant deaths, Homeland Security Department officials said yesterday. Arrests and deaths have soared in recent years.

The official migrant death toll kept by the U.S. Border Patrol has reached 62, putting the Tucson Sector on pace to break last year's record of 139. Apprehensions since Oct. 1 in the Tucson sector, which covers nearly the entire state, have topped 376,000, more than all of last year, according to the Border Patrol.

Under the repatriation plan, Mexican immigrants arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol will be asked if they wish to be returned to their hometowns. They would then be flown via chartered aircraft from Tucson to Mexico City or Guadalajara at the expense of the U.S. government, then taken by bus to their hometowns.

Those who decline the offer will be dropped at the nearest border community in northern Mexico.

The program is expected to cost between $12 million and $13 million, said Bill Strassberger, a Homeland Security Department spokesman.

Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., and Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., whose districts include the southern Arizona border, had mixed reactions.

"I am pleased the Mexican government has agreed to work with the United States to take this small step to address the illegal immigration problem, but I'm skeptical that a voluntary repatriation program will be particularly effective," Kolbe said in a statement.

Grijalva called it "a necessary humanitarian option for Mexican immigrants apprehended on the border."

"I have my doubts about its impact on unauthorized entry, but it will lessen the pressure on the border," he said. "The true solution to the problem lies in Congress, which must get off the dime and deal with real immigration reform."