Cuban migrants sent home by Mexico

MEXICO CITY - Mexico is sending illegal Cuban migrants home for the first time under a new accord aimed at cutting off an increasingly violent human-trafficking route to the United States, an official said yesterday.

Before Mexico signed the agreement with Cuba in October, authorities rarely sent migrants back to the communist island.

The Cubans were being deported from the resort city of Cancun, said Luis Alberto Molina, an immigration official in Quintana Roo state, where Cancun is located.

Cuban migrants in recent years have increasingly headed for Mexico - often to the coast near Cancun - then overland to Texas because it has become so hard to dodge the US Coast Guard and reach Florida by sea to qualify for US residency.

Until now, Cubans were detained briefly in Mexico, then given 10- to 30-day exit orders. That allowed them to continue on to Texas, where all that is required of Cuban migrants are identity documents and medical and background checks before they are welcomed to America.

But Mexico has become frustrated with the migrations as violent traffickers become increasingly involved in moving them across the country. Several Cuban-Americans believed to be involved in smuggling have been killed in recent years in or around Cancun.

ASSOCIATED PRESS