Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 15, 1990 TAG: 9003152686
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
The 53 were arrested on Eastern Airlines Flight 88 when it made a scheduled stop in Atlanta on a flight from Los Angeles. It was the same flight on which 45 illegal aliens were arrested Wednesday.
As the aliens Wednesday sat dejectedly waiting to be photographed, fingerprinted and bused to Brownsville, Texas, or Miami for deportation, they told of hard and dangerous times in their homelands and of dashed hopes for better lives.
Most had paid all they had or could borrow to smugglers who promised them safe passage to New York City and sometimes provided them with false documents.
Agents said the aliens had paid from $900 to $3,000 to be smuggled into the United States, a fortune in countries where a day's field labor can pay $4 or less.
Agents dubbed the operation "Red-Eye Replay." Immigration agents pulled 79 aliens off a similar Eastern cheap night flight in Atlanta just over a year ago, in the largest such raid.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service said it suspected aliens were resuming use of the Atlanta route recently when an unusually large number of Hispanic names started showing up on passenger lists.
About 90 Hispanic names were listed on the flight Tuesday, Neil Jacobs, assistant director of the Atlanta INS office, said.
The airline, which is required to sell a domestic ticket to anybody who wants one, cooperated in the investigation, Thomas Fischer, the INS director in Atlanta, said.
Most of Wednesday's aliens were Mexican but some came from El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala and Colombia. Three others taken from the flight had been freed.
Fischer said his agency estimated the smugglers who arranged the trips made about $122,000 from the group detained Wednesday.
"If you do that every day you're a millionaire in a week," he said.
Fischer said those detained would be allowed to try to prove they were fleeing political prosecution and thus qualify for refugee status.
Aliens who enter the United State strictly for economic reasons do not qualify as refugees.
The aliens detained Wednesday, who mostly appeared to be in their 20s, said they were in the United States pursuing a dream of a better life.
Jose Vasquez, 19, from El Salvador's rural, embattled Morazan province, said he borrowed $2,000 from family and friends to join an uncle who had found a restaurant job for him in New York City. He and his family planted corn for a wealthy landowner.
"Life was hard, and it was dangerous," he said. Morazan has been battered by heavy fighting between government and guerrilla forces for more than a decade.
by CNB