Growing Number of Migrants are Leaving US for Latin America

Faced with a battered U.S. economy and dismal job opportunities, Nubia Díaz and her husband Camilo left metropolitan Miami for the tiny town of Pandi in Colombia, where they say their money can take them much farther.

And they are not alone. An increasing number of Latin Americans -- documented and undocumented -- are choosing to return to their native countries, where political climates are stabilizing and their economies are growing.

“We are very comfortable here,” said Nubia, a dual citizen of Colombia and the U.S. “It is good for us. We have many things that we don’t have over there. Here, our house that is fully paid, we don’t have to pay mortgage. All we have to pay are bills.”

When the United States economy tanked after the real estate bubble burst, undocumented immigrants returned in droves to Latin America, especially those who worked in the construction sector, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute. Since then, the return rate has decreased but is still higher than usual, advocates say, citing anecdotal evidence.

“It’s not as high as you’d think,” concedes Colin Raja, program director of the National Network of Immigration Reform. “But we are definitely seeing an increase in the number of people going back.”

There are 1 million fewer undocumented immigrants in the U.S. since 2007, according to estimates. The Department of Homeland Security and the Pew Hispanic Center both estimate that the number of undocumented immigrants was the same in January 2010 as it was the previous year.

“What we’ve seen from Mexico is that inflow has dropped precipitously and outflow has stayed flat,” said Aaron Terrazas, analyst from the Migration Policy Institute.

One big reason that illegal immigration has slowed into the U.S. is a sharp increase in the cost. There is a heightened fear of being deported amid the passage of tighter immigration bills, say activists with the National Network of Immigration Reform. In addition, these activists say coyotes whom some immigrants pay to bring them across the border have increased their fees from $500 before the real estate boom to as high as $3,000 a person.

Economics are the main reason that people leave.

In areas such as New York City, Reverend Hector from Trinity Church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn says his congregation with a large Latino immigrant population has been hit hard by economics. One parishioner, a single mother, who frequents the food pantry, spends $800 a month on rent, $200 on child care and winds up with $200 left over, he says. She has been considering returning to her native Ecuador because she’s not sure that the sacrifices she’s made are worthwhile.

“She has told me at least she can live with dignity in her country,” he said.

The economy has hit Latinos hardest in Providence, Rhode Island and Hartford Connecticut, where they have the highest unemployment rates in the country, according to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute.

Residents in the area are acutely aware of this fact.

Julio Aragon, president of Mexican Association of Rhode Island, said he knows of families who have left the area for other states before returning to their homeland because times are tough. But for some, leaving is the same as admitting a sort of defeat and is a blow to pride, he explained.

“The last thing is to move to Mexico,” said Aragon. “We are feeling like we are stuck in the middle of nowhere all the (anti-immigrant) declarations from politicians, but we still believe we can do better here than we can at home. We maintain the dream.”

While documented professionals from countries like Mexico, Colombia and Chile, are returning home, they maintaining a US base and migrate between the two countries, said Terrazas.

Diaz and her family will join in the circular migration when they return to the US in a few years. At that time, their son will be old enough to start school. Her husband hopes he will be educated in the US but the family expects their youngest member will be lured back to Colombia with his parents, where they hope the economy continues to strengthen under a stable political climate and there is less pressure to work long hours to maintain a nice lifestyle.

“I know many people that moved back to Colombia,” said Diaz. After an accident, her husband could no longer work and relied on disability checks to pay the bills. “The money that we have every day was less, less, less because everything was higher. We are very, very good with that money and we are very comfortable here.”

Soni Sangha is a freelance writer based in New York City.

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Posted in anti immigrant , Chile , Colombia , illegal deportee , illegal immigrants , Latinos , mexico , National Network of Immigration Reform

Deportation Loophole Lets Thousands Live and Work in US Indefinitely

John has been slated for deportation -- for the last 20 years. The U.S. government renews his work permit annually. He has a driver’s license, and has started a family and set down roots here, a place he calls home.

But he does not have a green card, or permanent U.S. residency, because the U.S. government says John, who has lived here for about 30 years, is ineligible to call this country his home. 

John lives in an indefinite legal limbo, with the threat of arrest by immigration agents ever-present. But he hasn’t been expelled because his removal is on hold.

And his attorney, Jerard González of New Jersey, says his client sees it as preferable to the alternative – permanent expulsion.

“It’s better than being in Russia or Lebanon,” said González, a former federal immigration prosecutor. “He’s here with his wife.”

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deportations are delayed every year.

Delayed deportations – known by various names, including “deferred action” – have been part and parcel of U.S. immigration policy for decades, routinely granted under both Democrat and Republican administrations. A work permit and the ability to obtain a driver’s license – two essential things that otherwise are off-limits to undocumented immigrants -- often are part of the deal.

This loophole in immigration law has allowed tens of thousands of foreign nationals --whom the United States has rejected for permanent legal residency, commonly referred to as a “green card”-- stay in the country for years.  Sometimes, like in John's case, the delay is so long that immigrants marry, have children here, buy homes, and even start businesses.

The loophole has benefited immigrants such as José Humberto and Hilda Jauregui of Peru, whose deportation immigration authorities agreed to suspend for a year on humanitarian grounds -- they are the guardians and caretakers of their granddaughter, a 17-year-old U.S. citizen who has leukemia.

And it has helped others with far more controversial cases, such as people whom the U.S. government slated for deportation on grounds that they were involved in terrorism.

Most immigrants trapped in the deportation web never get a delay. Rather, the delay often is granted to those who can afford top attorneys, or those who get the support of, say, members of Congress or the Senate, or who become the subject of a media campaign.

Although González supports the system of delaying deportations in certain cases, he says he has been troubled by some of the people he has seen dodge deportation.

An example, he said, is a Northern Ireland man who served jail time because of activities linked to his membership in the outlawed paramilitary group Irish Republican Army, or IRA.

“I thought about the disparity,” González said. “He gets to stay, but the others are gone – deported -- because they didn’t have the pull, didn’t have the political connections.”

How many have benefited is hard to discern. The power to put a deportation on hold is a tool available to, and used by, a variety of agencies and courts with a say on immigration matters, and the practice is marred by inconsistency, gaping holes in data, and cases that languish in suspension for years.

"Deferred action" is part of a parallel immigration universe that has not been part of the national debate, and about which everyday Americans know little, if anything.

From The Shadows to Official Policy

Now, the issue of deferred deportation is moving to the front burner, on the heels of the recent announcement by the Obama Administration that it is suspending removals while it makes a top priority removing immigrants who are criminals or who pose a threat to national security.

Some 300,000 deportation cases that are pending will be reviewed case by case, administration officials say. Low priority deportation cases – those involving undocumented immigrants brought here by their parents, relatives of U.S. citizens, and those with relatives who served in the U.S. military – will be put on hold and perhaps closed.

How it will work, exactly, is still unclear.

The announcement drew the ire of activists and groups who favor strict immigration enforcement. They said the Obama Administration is sidestepping immigration laws and unilaterally granting amnesty.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said the shift is the administration's "plan to grant backdoor amnesty to illegal immigrants."

House Republicans plan to hold hearings within a month challenging the new Obama Administration deportation policy.

Smith introduced a bill called the Hinder the Administration’s Legalization Temptation (HALT) Act, which prevents deferring deportations until January, 2013, the end of Obama’s first term.

"The Obama administration should enforce immigration laws, not look for ways to ignore them,” Smith said in a statement. “The Obama administration should not pick and choose which laws to enforce."

But Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the ranking Democrat on the House immigration subcommittee, said the outrage over deferred deportations ignores the fact that “Deferred action has been a tool used by every president.”

Those who defend delaying deportations view the practice as a necessary antidote to a broken immigration system.

“By and large the [new deportation] priorities are accurate,” Lofgren said. “The resources should be targeted at people who endanger society, and not people who have longstanding ties to the United States and relatives of Americans.”

“How guilty is the six-month-old kid who came here [illegally]?” Lofgren asked. “They did what they were supposed to, they obeyed their parents.”

The Deportation System Has Lacked Transparency

The system of deferred deportations long has been a largely opaque one, with the delays granted by different agencies using different criteria and employing different terms for the action (or lack thereof). Comprehensive data is hard to come by, making it difficult to assess the whole practice of suspending deportations.

DHS data for one category, “deferred action,” shows that an average of slightly over 600 people a year have received this reprieve under the Obama Administration.  An average of more than 750 people a year got it in former President George Bush’s last term.

Another category, “cancellation of removal,” shows that nearly 10 years ago, the U.S. cancelled deportation proceedings for roughly 24,000 immigrants, according to the DHS Office of Immigration Statistics.

That number increased for several years after that – to 29,000 in 2003, and peaked at 32,700 in 2004. But deportation cancellations dropped sharply in 2007, from nearly 30,000 in 2006 to just shy of 15,000.

The drop continued steadily under the Obama Administration –which has presided over more deportations than any other-- with 8,100 cancellations of deportation cases in 2010.

The longer a person stays in the United States illegally, ironically, the better the chance of getting deportation rescinded.

To qualify for cancellation of deportation, for example, immigration laws require an undocumented immigrant to have lived in the United States no less than 10 years.

Laws also require that the immigrant have no record of problems with police, and that deportation would pose “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to a spouse, parent or child who is a U.S. citizen or legal immigrant.

Those who defend delaying deportations say they’re important in a system that is rife with flaws, and in which many immigrants do not get a fair shot to make their case because of a lack of legal counsel.

Proving extreme hardship, for example, said González, the attorney, is difficult.

“It’s the highest standard,” he said.

Groups on different sides of the immigration debate say the way the U.S. has managed deferred deportations has been problematic.

The gaps in the data that is available to the public doesn’t sit well with Lofgren.

The congresswoman said she ran into roadblocks when she tried to find out why deferred action approvals had declined under the Obama Administration.

“I couldn’t get an answer,” Lofgren said of her attempts to get more information. “It’s down, and I have a problem with that.”

There long has been no formal national procedure for handling deferred action requests, said a July memorandum by the Office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, repeating concerns it had raised in 2007 about the USCIS’s system of delaying deportation.

“Stakeholders lack information regarding the number and nature of deferred action requests submitted each year,” the memorandum said, “and they are not provided with any information on the number of cases approved and denied, or the reasons underlying USCIS’ decisions.”

“Currently, there are no official, national standard operating procedures for how to process a deferred action request,” it said. “Tracking submissions and releasing the data to the public would improve management of the deferred action process and provide transparency to the public.”

A Valid Reprieve, or Back-Door Amnesty?

Proponents of strict immigration enforcement said deferred deportations undermine respect for immigration laws.

“There’s clearly a need for flexibility in any area of law that people are enforcing,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors strict immigration policies. “The law is a blunt instrument, providing for a little wiggle room is just prudent."

“The problem is when that wiggle room, the loophole, becomes the policy,” Krikorian said. “These various means of avoiding deportation is the policy itself.”

The USCIS ombudsman memo described deferred action as a reprieve that is meant to be granted for one or two years.

Deportations have been delayed for caretakers on whom an ill U.S. citizen or permanent resident depends, for people who have been the victims of spousal battery or human trafficking, and people like Haitians, whose homeland was devastated by an earthquake, leaving the already struggling country unable – it was argued – to absorb deportees.

The reprieve given to groups such as the Haitians is called Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.

“It’s not amnesty,” said former immigration commissioner Doris Meissner, who served during the Clinton Administration, and who authored guidelines on delaying deportations. “It’s a case by case review.”

“People are not getting any kind of legal status other than to have enforcement action be suspended temporarily,” said Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “All this does is stop the clock for the moment, but you’re nonetheless in a limbo situation.”

But deferred deportations, critics argue, stretch out too long – allowing many people the United States says are ineligible to live here to build lives here. Critics say it’s a way to game the immigration system.

For many groups, for example, they say, TPS hardly has turned out to be temporary.

“The Liberians had TPS year after year,” Krikorian said, “their kids were born here, graduated college, and got married in this supposed ‘temporary status.”

Hurricane Mitch, he said, occurred in 1998, “but Hondurans still have TPS.”

In September, 2009, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced a two-year suspension of deportation for widows of U.S. citizens who had died before green card petitions for their spouses were approved.

Advocates for the widows had argued that the U.S. was cruel and unfair in trying to deport people who had tried to do the right thing, but had not been able to complete the legalization process because of tragic circumstances.

It become known as the “widow’s penalty.”

In her announcement, Napolitano said: “Smart immigration policy balances strong enforcement practices with common-sense, practical solutions to complicated issues.”

She added that she hoped the two-year reprieve would give the widows – many of whom had lost court appeals -- a chance to try to find a means to obtain legal status. She also urged Congress to consider changing the law that called for deporting the widows.

It worked. A month later, Congress passed legislation ending the widow's penalty.

Suspending Deportations Was Called Critical for Northern Ireland Peace Process

Delayed deportation became a bargaining chip for about a dozen Northern Ireland men who were undocumented in the United States and who had been denied permanent residency after the disclosure that they had served time in British prisons for such things as killings of Northern Ireland police and weapons smuggling for the outlawed paramilitary group the Irish Republican Army, or IRA.

The Clinton Administration said it was suspending their deportation to help the peace process between those who supported British rule in Northern Ireland, and those, like the IRA, and its political arm, Sinn Fein, who opposed it.

Many of the men overstayed visas or entered illegally, and had not disclosed their convictions on immigration applications. They argued that their convictions were not for crimes, as they saw it, but for political issues.

Many of them have married U.S. citizen women and – with work permits that are renewed while they’re in legal limbo – have obtained jobs, driver’s licenses, and even started businesses.

“They’ve been in limbo for 20 years,” said Bruce Morrison, a former congressman who chaired the House immigration subcommittee. “They prefer limbo to leaving."

“They’re married, they’re working, they’re paying taxes, but they’re deportable,” said Morrison, who has a long record of helping Irish immigrants. “These people are in what is essentially in a parole status.”

Their status was met with discomfort by the Bush Administration, Morrison said. But the delayed deportation status continued.

“They got work authorization and travel authorization under the Bush Administration,” Morrison said. “The Bush Administration considered it to be Clinton’s issue, they never sent them [the men] a note” documenting the extension of the status.

“They didn’t want to have it scrutinized. It’s clear they didn’t want any piece of paper showing up on their watch saying they gave deferred action to terrorists.”

Morrison says such discretion in enforcing law is crucial. And the benefits that accompany permission to work while deportation is held at bay, he said, is practical.

“You have no rights,” Morrison said. “You have the right to work, because it doesn’t make sense to have people starve, and we don’t give them welfare.”

“There’s nothing pernicious about this,” he said. “These people were not a threat to anyone in the United States.”

Jerard González, the former immigration prosecutor, disagrees that former IRA members should get a reprieve from deportation.

González handled cases involving former IRA members when he was a federal prosecutor working on immigration cases.

He recalls pursuing the deportation of a man who served time in a Northern Ireland prison in the 1980s for acting as an armed lookout for an Irish Republican Army splinter group in the shooting of a police officer.

The man also was convicted on charges of conspiring to shoot another officer.

The man remains in the United States, where he owns homes and a business while he fights deportation.

Irish-American lobby groups rallied around him, launching email and telephone campaigns targeting political leaders, and got the support of several members of Congress.

“If the goal of our enforcement policies are to remove criminals, here’s a convicted terrorist,” González said.

“I thought about the disparity,” González said. “He gets to stay, but the others are gone – deported -- because they didn’t have the pull, didn’t have the political connections.”

With the Loophole Front and Center, a Battle Looms

Meissner sees the new deportation policy as a pragmatic first step toward some sort of immigration reform.

"They're taking something that's been done piecemeal, and making it more focused, more strategic, by putting their resources where they are best used," she said."High priority cases will move the courts more quickly, there won't be as large a backlog."

Meissner says that the heated differences over how to handle enforcement and deportations underscore "why Congress needs to act on immigration."

Stacked next to the estimated 11 million undocumented people in the United States, Meissner said, the 300,000 people whose deportations will be reviewed "is a small proportion," and hardly address the larger issue of illegal immigration.

"No one can rectify [the system's flaws] but Congress," she said.

That said, she noted that immigration is a much complex matter than when she was immigration commissioner.

"We're dealing with a much more sizable number of unauthorized immigrants," she said, "who have been here a long time, they are in mixed-status households, they're invested in various ways in their communities. They have roots now."

Source Elizabeth Llorente

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Posted in deportation , illegal immigrants , immigration agents , Latin America , latino , latino deportation , U.S. government

Obama pushes jobs plan as help for Hispanics

WASHINGTON (AP) - Courting Hispanics while promoting his new jobs plan, President BarackObama on Wednesday told a black-tie Latino audience that his $447 billion package of tax cuts and public works spending would put more money in the pockets of Latino workers and business owners and increase opportunities for Hispanics.

The president made his pitch to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 34th Annual Awards Gala. The event is part of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Addressing an important constituency both in the voting population and in Congress, the president kept up his vigorous public relations campaign for his economic measures while also beseeching the crowd to help him pass his education and immigration agenda.

“Lift up your voices,” he told an audience that included Princess Cristina of Spain and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “Make yourselves heard.”

Obama’s economic plan, the administration’s top priority, received polite applause from the crowd. People saved their loudest approval for the president’s assurance that he remained determined to pass a rewrite the nation’s immigration laws to offer a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Blaming Republican resistance, he said: “It’s been a long and frustrating road for all of us”.

Obama said changes in immigration law are key to economic growth and would fulfill what he called “the idea of America.”

“No matter what you may hear, in this country there is no ‘us’ or ‘them.’ There is only ‘us.’ One nation, under God, indivisible,” he said. “And immigrants are part of that American family and a source of our strength.”

In advance of his remarks, the White House said the jobs proposal would lower payroll taxes for about 25 million Hispanic workers and about 250,000 Hispanic-owned businesses, statistics cited by the president to argue his case. Moreover, the White House said the legislation could help the 344,000 Hispanics no longer working as carpenters or as construction laborers because of the recession.

“You know how hard this recession has hit families, especially Latino families,” Obama said.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute also presented its 2011 Chairman’s Award to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar

Source Marcus Atkinson

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Posted in 2011 hispanic economy , barack obama , BarackObama , hispanic economy , illegal immigrants , Immigration Law , latin economy

Arrests of Immigrants on U.S. Southern Border at 40-Year Low

The number of immigrant arrests on the border with Mexico stands at its lowest level in 40 years, undermining conservative claims that the zone is "out of control" and leading activists to insist the time is right for comprehensive immigration reform.

So far in fiscal year 2011, which ends on Sept. 30, 447,731 immigrants have been arrested along the southern border, a figure that represents a significant decline in the average of about a million arrests annually in the 1980s and '90s.

Figures compiled by the Border Patrol show that after peaking at 1.5 million in 1999, arrests of undocumented immigrants have declined every year beginning in 2006.

Although in the 1990s it was estimated that for every arrested undocumented immigrant two others managed to avoid the Border Patrol, now thanks to aerial monitoring, the greater number of Border Patrol personnel in the region and technological advances, calculations are that in the sectors of El Paso, Texas; Yuma, Arizona; and San Diego about 90 percent of all those who cross the border illegally are captured.

The point of view that the southern border was "out of control" intensified in the 1990s, creating the conditions for building the triple border wall along the frontier between Tijuana and San Diego which is currently pushing immigration flows eastward into Arizona.

Academic Joseph Nevins, author of the book "Operation Guardian," says that anti-immigrant sentiment crystallized in public political terms in 1994, when the Clinton administration implemented Operation Guardian in California, erecting new physical and legal barriers to undocumented immigrants.

As a consequence of Guardian, the number of Border Patrol agents in San Diego grew from 4,200 in 1994 to 9,212 in 2000, a situation that forced undocumented immigrants to shift their border crossing attempts to the often-deadly Arizona desert.

In 1986, U.S. authorities arrested 629,656 immigrants in San Diego, compared with 71,675 in Tucson, while so far during the current fiscal year 212,202 arrests have been made in the Tucson Sector compared with 68,565 here.

Activist Pedro Rios, with the American Friends Service Committee in San Diego, told Efe that although it is clear that the economic crisis has put the brakes on immigration, what has not declined is the number of people who have died trying to cross the border.

"The presence of (Border Patrol) agents makes the flow move to more dangerous zones and take more time. Bodies have been found up to 75 miles north of the border. We have about 6,000 dead people since 1994," said Rios.

"The border, as the low numbers of immigrant arrests show, does not need to be militarized any more. It's regrettable that there continues to exist a discourse that says that before getting started with immigration reform, the border must be secured, when now it is," said Rios.

Source EFE

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Posted in 2011 mexico illegal immigrants , barack obama , border patrol Arizona , illegal immigrants , illegalimmigrants deportation , Latin America , Mexico illegal immigrants

Mexico: Sharp Increase in Number of Immigrants Leaving the US

Mexico City –  The number of Mexican emigrants who opted to return to their homeland from the United States increased sharply over the past five years to almost 1 million, according to census data.

The deputy secretary of Population, Migration and Religious Affairs, Rene Zenteno Quintero, told a press conference that that figure was 2.7 times higher than the amount registered in Mexico's 2000 census.

The exodus of Mexicans to the United States has likewise been reduced, "seen in a net zero balance between emigrants and immigrants who return to Mexico, meaning we're experiencing a historic moment," he said.

The official also referred to a recent National Occupation and Employment Survey that shows a 70 percent decline in the rate of emigration over the past four years.

He attributed that situation to a variety of factors, including a U.S. recession in 2008-2009 and reduced expectations for an economic recovery in that country.

That situation has been compounded by a "hostile environment toward illegal immigrants, reflected in the more than 1 million deportees during President (Barack) Obama's administration and the proliferation of negative local environments in terms of political discourse, public opinion and legal overhauls," he said.

Douglas Massey, a sociologist and immigration specialist who also spoke at the press conference, said he is pessimistic about the possibility of immigrant-friendly legislation being approved in the United States in the near future.

Activists who work with emigrant communities also are discouraged by Obama's immigration policies, Massey said, noting that despite promising during the 2008 presidential campaign to enact comprehensive immigration reform "he's done almost nothing" so far.

The border has become more militarized under Obama's watch with more resources and more agents deployed, according to Massey, president of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. He said deportations also have accelerated to levels not seen since the 1930s.

The expert added that he is hopeful the next presidential election will be the catalyst for some type of immigration reform that benefits the millions of - mostly Mexican - undocumented migrants in the United States.

Remittances from expats in the United States are Mexico's No. 2 source of revenue after oil exports.

Another topic addressed at the press conference was the northward migration of Central Americans, a phenomenon also affected by the United States' economic woes and especially a drop in the demand for labor.

"This is evident by the number of apprehensions along the border and National Migration Institute statistics, which indicate that in 2005 close to 450,000 Central Americans traveled through Mexico en route to the United States while in 2010 that number fell to 148,000," Zenteno Quintero said.

Source EFE

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Posted in barack obama , illegal immigrants , Latino immigrants , national migration institute statistics , National Occupation and Employment Survey , Rene Zenteno Quintero

Migrants run Mexican gauntlet to make leap of faith to US

Massacre in Tamaulipas by Zetas drugs cartel fails to stem tide of Central Americans risking el brinco – the jump across Mexico.

Salsa music piped from the radio and the bus had a name, Teresita, but there was nothing jaunty about the young men with small backpacks who filed aboard in silence, avoiding eye contact.

Behind them was home, Honduras, ahead lay the United States, and in between was el brinco, the jump. Also known as Mexico. Not so much a leap as a roll of the dice.

The passengers were illegal migrants and they were bracing for perils which, as they travelled through northern Guatemala to the Mexican borderwards Mexico, could strike at any time: betrayal, kidnap, murder.

A landscape of stunted trees, cattle and the occasional police checkpoint passed with barely a word spoken on the crammed little bus. There was plenty to say but, as one passenger explained later, better to stay silent. "You don't know who's listening."

Extortion by police, falling off a train and getting lost in the desert have always been risks, but the journey has become much worse since organized criminals started preying on travelers.

Fifteen Nicaraguans were shot and burned on a bus outside Guatemala City, allegedly because the driver was transporting cocaine without the permission of drug gangs. Mexico is the real danger: mass abductions, ransom demands, tortures, massacres.

The bus stopped at the San Pedro river, deep in a tropical forest once ruled by the Maya. The passengers piled out, forming groups of four or five. Canoes would take them to El Ceibo from where they would hike into Mexico. "You've got to be optimistic," said Juan Colindres, 25, expressing hope over experience. Five times he had headed for the US and five times he was foiled in Mexico – robbed by police, robbed by his guide, deported.

Each time organised crime's breath felt closer, he said. There was no safety in numbers. Armed gangs would stop trains with hundreds of migrants clinging to the roof and herd them into waiting buses. "Better to go in a small group so you can dodge a bit," said Colindres, wriggling his hand.

But even small shoals get hooked. Some are sold to gangs by guides, others by fellow migrants known as enganchadoras. Others are handed over by corrupt police and immigration officials. With their backpacks and accents, migrants are easily identifiable.

Groups such as the Zetas drug cartel in Mexico find it profitable to demand ransoms from captive migrants' relatives, especially if they are in the US. They recruit some hostages as footsoldiers.

Rumours circulated from about 2006 but the phenomenon exploded into public consciousness only last August when Zetas massacred 72 people – mostly Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadoreans – at an abandoned farmhouse in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas.

About 300,000 migrants pass through Mexico each year, the vast majority Central Americans, but keeping track of them is impossible, said Flora Reynosa, head of a state office in Guatemala City tasked with defending migrants' human rights. Kidnapping had become a plague, she said.

Families trek to Reynosa's little office to supply names of missing relatives. That morning a father had registered the disappearance of a son who left in February, with no word since.

Thelma Schaub, a psychologist in the office, said that families' anguish often leads to neuroses, such as compulsively watching TV news bulletins in the hope of spotting loved ones.

Casas del Migrante, a network of church-funded shelters in the region, receives chilling stories.

Carlos Lopez, who runs one such centre in Guatemala City, recalled a Honduran who escaped from a farm in northern Mexico with more than 200 captive migrants. Those left behind, and whose ransoms were not paid, were dismembered by "the butcher", a stocky killer who seemed to enjoy his work.

The brinco used to refer to the final jump into the US, but now also refers to running the gauntlet that Mexico itself has become.

It started a decade ago when authorities began intercepting migrants to reassure the US that an immigration accord with Mexico would not open floodgates from all Latin America. The crackdown but pushed the flow into the shadows.

Mexico's declaration of war on the drug cartels in late 2006 triggered a brutal competition among gangs to stamp authority on their territories. All vulnerable groups were fair game, few more so than migrants. A few thousand dollars' individual ransom added up, as victims multiplied, to a lucrative sideline.

Some of the most travelled routes passed through Zeta territories. When not doing its own dirty work, the organisation lent its fearsome name as a sort of franchise to smaller gangs.

A National Human Rights Commission report in 2009 documented hundreds of mass kidnappings involving about 10,000 people in a six-month period. Victims said police and immigration agencies colluded with gangs.

The Tamaulipas massacre is thought to have been a warning to human traffickers who tried to bypass the Zetas.

One survivor said three migrants accepted an offer to join the Zetas, for a $1,000 (£615) weekly salary. The rest were blindfolded, ordered to lie on the ground and shot.

The outcry prompted a law in April guaranteeing migrants' rights. But they remain subject to arbitrary detention and deportation.

The same month authorities freed hundreds of captives from safe houses, mostly in Tamaulipas. One group said it had been ordered off a bus by immigration officials and passed on to a gang.

It is a measure of Central America's poverty and unemployment that so many still risk the journey.

"There's nothing in Tegucigalpa [the capital of Honduras] for me. And there's an excellent chance I'll make it back to the US," said Edwin Omar, 22, as he waited for a canoe by the San Pedro river.

He had been working as an interior decorator in Miami, Florida, before being deported seven months ago.

Coyotes – the name given to those who specialise in human smuggling – offer different "packages".

For $5,000 you are escorted from Honduras through Guatemala and Mexico to the US. Make it to the US border on your own steam and you pay $1,500 for help with the final brinco. Prices include three attempts.

The El Ceibo crossing into Mexico has few official controls, reducing the risk of deportation, but is rife with Zetas. The El Carmen crossing is the reverse.

For many the journey is a rite of passage. Seven Honduran teenagers in a Guatemala City shelter said they left home on a whim but were now marooned, having used all their cash to bribe police at checkpoints.

Odanis Acuna, 35, a Cuban asylum seeker, warned them against Mexico. "I was robbed and stripped naked. I'm lucky to be alive." Two of the teenagers are resolved to return home.

ven without predatory gangs, journeys can end in tragedy. Cristobal Tambriz, 17, lost his grip and fell under a train in central Mexico. It sliced off his lower right leg. The Red Cross is helping with a prosthetic limb but a bleak future awaits on the family's dust-blown farm. "I wanted to send back money, now I won't even be able to work here."

Last September Laura Coc, 22, left the family's hilltop house near Yesuj, outside Guatemala City, to join a brother and boyfriend in New Jersey. The family went into debt to pay a coyote 20,000 quetzals (£1,550).

Coc apparently died of sunstroke in the Arizona desert. No body has turned up, tormenting her mother, Maria, 50. "I want to bury her," she said, crying. "I want my daughter home."

Source Rory Carroll in Flores and Jo Tuckman in Mexico City

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