Cuba: Mexico to fight illegal migration to US

MEXICO CITY -- Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Monday his country will step up cooperation with Mexico to stem the flow of Cubans trying to get to reach the U.S. illegally through Mexico, an exodus fueling an increasingly violent human trafficking industry.

"It's an effort to prevent a phenomenon that neither the Mexican government or the Cuban government are really responsible for because illegal migration from Cuba is artificially stimulated from the United States," Perez Roque said, hours before he was to sign an agreement with the Mexican government. Mexican officials have refused to comment on details of the accord.

Perez Roque said over the weekend that Mexico has expressed willingness to repatriate Cubans who arrive in this country without proper documents.

Currently, Mexican rarely sends back Cubans caught entering the country illegally. Many are given 30-day transit visas to continue on to Texas, where Cubans need only identity documents and undergo medical and background checks before being welcomed to America.

The U.S. generally allows Cubans who reach U.S. territory to stay, a policy the Cuban government has long condemned as encouraging Cubans to risk dangerous escape routes.

But Mexico - already the main route for Central American migrants trying to get to the U.S. -- is growing increasingly frustrated with the Cuban migration.

Because it has become so hard to dodge the U.S. Coast Guard and reach Florida to qualify for U.S. residency, Cuban migrants in recent years have been heading for Mexico, then overland to Texas. Last year 11,126 used that route, compared to just 1,055 who landed in the Miami area, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

U.S. and Mexican officials say the migration is backed by increasingly ruthless human trafficking gangs. Several Cuban-Americans believed to be involved in smuggling have been killed in recent years in or around Cancun. Smugglers have stolen hundreds of speedy boats from Florida docks for use in the trade.

And in June, gunmen snatched 33 Cubans off a government bus taking them to an immigration station in southern Mexico, possibly to extort money from them or their smugglers. Many of those migrants later turned up in the U.S., and all detained Cuban migrants now have armed police escorts.

Perez Roque said his visit to Mexico was a sign of improved relations between the two countries. Ties soured under the 2000-2006 presidency of Vicente Fox, when Mexico voted in the U.N. in favor of monitoring human rights in Cuba. Relations reached a low in 2004, when both countries called home their ambassadors.

President Felipe Calderon, a conservative who also has warm ties with the U.S. government, has said he wants normal relations with Cuba.

"The situation has really radically changed from the way relations were a few years ago," Perez Roque said.