Mexican border towns fear U.S. crackdown will strand thousands

JULIE WATSON
Published: 06.16.2006

NOGALES, Mexico - Patricia Lopez's journey toward a better life in the United States ended with a nighttime robbery, a twisted ankle and a Border Patrol escort to the frontier - where she was dumped at dawn without a peso in her pocket, 1,575 miles from home.

She's far from alone: Nearly 1 million people, many of them penniless, were turned back across the border last year, and analysts fear that tougher new U.S. border enforcement will inundate border towns with the desperate and the destitute.

Migrant shelter directors are scrambling for money and considering hiring more staff to keep their doors open 24 hours a day in anticipation of a record number of migrants being repatriated.

"Everyone is getting ready because we're worried there is going to be a mass deportation of people," said Francisco Loureiro, who runs a migrant shelter in Nogales that houses up to 120 people a night. "We're worried there's going to be too many people to tend to, and we just don't have the room for more."