Chinese Held by Mexico Flee; U.S. Arrests 117

After a daring nighttime escape from a crowded hangar at the Mexicali airport, more than 100 illegal Chinese immigrants fled across the U.S.-Mexico border and were apprehended Saturday while 158 others were herded onto a jetliner bound for home, authorities said.

Several dozen more remained at large after the escape, the strangest twist yet in the odyssey of 306 U.S.-bound Chinese arrested last month near Ensenada.

The immigrants were awaiting deportation when about 200 of them overran weary Mexican police shortly after 9 p.m. Friday and bolted into the desert.

Many headed straight for the border a few miles to the north. U.S. Border Patrol agents began apprehending them in farmland east of Calexico about midnight. By Saturday night, agents had apprehended 117 of the immigrants. But in the process the escapees had accomplished a key goal: to be arrested on U.S. soil, allowing them to remain while seeking political asylum or awaiting deportation proceedings.

No injuries were reported during the escape or arrests. The captured immigrants were tired and hungry, said Paul Villanueva, assistant chief of the Border Patrol in El Centro.

“They were no trouble whatsoever,” he said. “Mainly they were just happy to be in the U.S.”

Mexican police also captured dozens of runaways south of the border, said Arturo Guerra Flores, an official of the Mexican immigration service in Mexicali.

Once the immigrants had broken through a wall of officers surrounding the hangar, Guerra said, Mexican police had to choose between using force or letting them go. He said he made “the most important decision of my life” by ordering the officers to show restraint and respect the escapees’ human rights.

“The only way to have stopped them would have been with repression, to shoot them or hit them with clubs,” he said. “Mexico has a very clear policy in these matters. These are not criminals, they are undocumented immigrants, they have committed an administrative violation. . . . The most important thing is that there were no dead or wounded.”

The escape was set in motion by a series of events that began Thursday when a contingent of Mexican federal and city police officers transferred the immigrants from a temporary detention center in a Mexicali sports auditorium to the airport, where they boarded a plane for China.

But they were removed from the plane when U.S. diplomats denied permission for a refueling stop in Alaska, fearing the immigrants would seek political asylum once on U.S. soil. Relocated to a hot, crowded hangar at the airport outside Mexicali, the immigrants grew increasingly agitated as the hours passed.

“The violence among them increased and four threatened to commit suicide,” Guerra said.

It was shortly after 9 p.m. Friday, officials said, when more than 200 immigrants banded together and overtook nearly 100 weary city police officers posted around the open-air hangar.

Officers rounded up dozens of escapees in the surrounding area throughout the night and morning, Guerra said Saturday. Police remained on alert, but the search for those who eluded capture had been called off, he said.

Mexican police initially arrested the Chinese immigrants April 26 in Ensenada, where they had been smuggled ashore after a harsh monthlong voyage for which they paid up to $30,000 each. The group, 18 of them women and many headed for San Francisco and New York, was later transferred to the Mexicali auditorium.

They were cared for by federal and local officials and Mexicali’s large Chinese-Mexican community while the Mexican government determined their fate, deciding finally to deport all but one man, despite fears expressed by other immigrants of persecution or retaliation upon their return.

Along the border near Mexicali on Saturday, the Border Patrol beefed up deployments and brought in reinforcements from Yuma, Ariz., to deter illegal crossings and find more escapees, Villanueva said. Agents in the El Centro sector often end up tracking down border-crossers who become disoriented in the barren, potentially dangerous terrain; the Chinese face a particular risk of getting lost because they are unfamiliar with the area.

“We will keep looking until we get official confirmation that the Mexican authorities have captured the others,” said Villanueva, who added that those in the group would be processed for deportation but have the right to request political asylum.

Most immigrants from mainland China remain in the United States and are bailed out while awaiting deportation or political asylum hearings, according to immigration officials.

Escapees captured by Mexican authorities--along with the 100 or so who did not bolt--were put on a plane for China that left about 11:40 a.m., Guerra said. The flight followed a transatlantic route with scheduled stops in Europe, he said.

On Friday, a State Department spokeswoman confirmed reports that the U.S. government had agreed to pay part of the cost of flying the deportees back to China. She said the United States denied the Alaska refueling stop because the immigrants had intended to enter the United States illegally.

Saturday’s events unfolded at a time when legislators and other officials have expressed concern about the influx of Chinese illegal immigrants who are smuggled into the United States through a lucrative worldwide network.

Villanueva said the immigrants caught Saturday will have to be transported to a San Pedro detention facility because El Centro facilities are filled with about 200 Chinese who arrived in San Diego on Thursday in a dilapidated Taiwanese fishing trawler intercepted by the Coast Guard.

U.S.-Mexican relations, always delicate in the area of illegal immigration, may suffer as a result of the Mexicali escape, according to a U.S. government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“This sure doesn’t help,” the official said. “Congressmen get outraged, people get upset. Mexico is not making it easier.”

Guerra said he was proud that what he called a “historic” incident--one of the largest reported arrests of Chinese immigrants in Mexico in recent years--had been resolved without bloodshed.

“What I think takes precedence over the criticism is the right to life and human rights,” he said.