Mexico Rules Out Deporting Iraqis

Iraqi Christians held by police at a Tijuana hotel appeared closer to their goal of asylum in the United States after Mexican authorities agreed Friday not to send them back to Iraq.

Authorities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border were still working out how and when the 133 emigres would be allowed to make their way to the San Ysidro port of entry to pursue asylum bids.

Jose Angel Pescador Osuna, who oversees immigration issues for Mexico’s government, delivered welcome news to the migrants when he ruled out sending them back home. He said Mexican police would soon be withdrawn from the hotel where the Iraqis, members of the persecuted Chaldean minority, have been confined since Wednesday.

“We don’t consider them criminals and though they arrived in the country without documents, we are ready to help them and treat them with the dignity they deserve,” Pescador said.

It was not clear how soon any of the Iraqis could make it to the border.

The border drama began Wednesday after dozens of Chaldeans, tired of waiting at the hotel for the United States to approve their asylum petitions, walked across the San Ysidro crossing.

On the same day Mexican police surrounded the Tijuana hotel to investigate possible immigration violations. A quandary over what to do next prompted intense talks between the United States and Mexico and drew an outpouring of support for the Iraqis among San Diego County’s Chaldean community, estimated at 20,000.

Mexico indicated that it would set free the Iraqis as long as the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service was willing to process them for asylum. INS officials were still in talks with Mexican diplomats on the matter late Friday but signaled that they were ready.

“We’re sending additional people to San Diego, if there is a sudden influx for processing,” said INS spokeswoman Sharon Gavin. “We’re ready, willing and able.”

Mexico held the Iraqis as illegal immigrants because they entered using false passports from Greece and other countries. Some of the families had been at the shabby downtown hotel for months while waiting for their asylum requests to be answered at the San Ysidro border crossing.

Because of Tijuana’s proximity to the United States and a large and supportive Chaldean community in San Diego, it has become a way station for increasing numbers of Iraqis fleeing the regime of Saddam Hussein. U.S. officials said they have received about 170 asylum applications from Iraqis at the crossing in the last two months.

On Wednesday 45 Iraqis turned themselves in to U.S. immigration officials at the San Ysidro border crossing. More continued to show up Thursday and Friday, arriving from other points in Tijuana, to bring the total to 79.

All but three have been detained in a facility run under contract to the INS. Two women, one of them pregnant, and a child were released on humanitarian grounds until their case is processed.

While those staying at the hotel expressed relief at word that they would not be deported, nine other people arrested at the hotel Tuesday night may face criminal charges of violating Mexican immigration law, Pescador said.

Four of them are Iraqi Americans who were living at the hotel and assisting the Chaldeans in applying for political asylum. None of the people arrested had adequate explanations when asked what they were doing in a hotel with so many undocumented immigrants, he said.

Details of their alleged crimes were not released.

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Associated Press contributed to this story.