Home for the Holidays -- With an Escort

If you’re a Mexican living in the U.S. and the journey to your homeland this holiday season takes you through this rough-and-tumble border city, one group of police officers will offer to give you a VIP escort so other police don’t rob you.

With their American-bought cars loaded with Christmas presents, returning Mexican immigrants have long presented an enticing target for corrupt cops, customs agents and other unsavory characters.

This month and next, Mexico’s federal government is sponsoring the Paisano (Countryman) Project in this and other border crossing points, as tens of thousands of people travel from America to states such as Zacatecas and Michoacan in the heart of Mexico.

Driving a beat-up tan van that had brought him from Franklin, Tenn., and heading for the city of La Piedad in Michoacan, bleary-eyed Fernando Guzman seemed an unlikely candidate for the red-carpet treatment.

And yet, there he was, following the red-and-blue flashing lights of a Nuevo Laredo police car, his family’s caravan of vehicles being guided through the city to a customs checkpoint 16 miles outside of town.

No one hit him up for a bribe. No one threatened to confiscate his Christmas presents if he didn’t fork up a little “assistance” for the men in blue.

“When they treat you like this it makes you happy to be here,” said Guzman, 36, who works detailing cars back in Tennessee. “When you first start the trip, you’re full of worries. You think you won’t make it back home to your tierra [land] without at least one bad thing happening to you.”

The program has escorted at least 1,300 cars so far this holiday season.

President Vicente Fox has made treatment of Mexicans in the U.S. a priority of his administration. In 2000, he invited a group of expatriates to his first official appearance as president and declared Mexicans living abroad “national heroes.”

On Wednesday, Fox visited Nuevo Laredo to review the program.

“I want to tell our beloved paisanos and paisanas that they can come [to Mexico] with confidence,” Fox said. “They will be treated here with honesty and efficiency. And if they suffer any abuse, their complaints will be heard.”

Last year, during a similar Fox visit, local television reported that state police had robbed a caravan of travelers outside the city.

The returning migrants “come to see their sons, wives and brothers,” said Laura Montano, head of Mexico’s federal immigration office here and local coordinator of the Paisano Program. “For them, to return home is a feeling of success and happiness. That’s why it’s sad that some [officials] try to take that happiness away from them.”

The Paisano escorts are also in place at all the other major crossing points along the border, from Tijuana near San Diego to Matamoros near the Gulf of Mexico, Montano said.

In Nuevo Laredo, Montano has helped streamline the process whereby returning immigrants register their vehicles for the trip home, a paper chase that requires approval from three Mexican agencies. In years past, the procedures were rife with abuse.

Now the returnees can get all the paperwork done in a single office, in less than an hour, with young aides in white windbreakers labeled “Paisano” roaming the room to make sure they don’t suffer any official abuse. Large signs proclaimed “Feliz Navidad Paisanos.”

With a reporter looking on, Montano escorted one elderly -- and somewhat disoriented -- couple from Texas through the procedure.

“Ordinarily, we would expect them to try and take some money from us,” said Gabriel Quinones, a resident of Belton, Texas, who, like other immigrants, carried a laminated copy of his U.S. naturalization papers to show the officials. “But I guess that’s not going to happen this time.” Quinones was traveling to Durango to visit relatives.

Outside the registration center, the cars in the parking lot offered proof of how Mexican immigration has spread to nearly every corner of the United States. They sported license plates from a dozen states, including Illinois, New York, Georgia, Colorado and Connecticut.

The Guzman family caravan from Tennessee included Fernando, his brother (whose truck was towing a trailer), his cousin and a guy from Georgia they had met along the way.

Their escort was young patrolman Heraclio Lerma, who, like all the officers working on the Paisano Project here, is fresh out of the academy, untainted by connection to the department’s old guard.

“They haven’t even given me a gun yet,” Lerma said.

Reaching the customs checkpoint outside of town, Lerma said goodbye to his charges without accepting anything other than a grateful handshake from Guzman. “We can only hope that the rest of the trip is as nice as this,” Guzman said.