Bahamas Querying Haitian Immigrants

Authorities have begun processing 250 illegal immigrants--most of them Haitians--who were detained last week in the resort islands of Bimini and Cats Cay, 50 miles southeast of Miami.

A crackdown on aliens took place last Thursday when four boatloads of Royal Bahamas Defense Force troops and police officials landed at each island and began combing them in search of foreigners.

The raids are part of the Inmigration Department’s effort to rid the Bahamas of all illegal immigrants, said H.C. Walkline, a permanent secretary at the Ministry of National Security.

Officials in the Bahamas estimate that about 40,000 Haitians live illegally in the archipelago of 2,700 islands and cays that stretches in an arc from Florida to the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, 760 miles away.