MEDIA REACTION ON QUARANTINE NOVEMBER 14, 2005

UNCLAS TEGUCIGALPA 002404

SIPDIS

FOR PD/WHA (RQUIROZ),IIP/G/WHA, WHA/CEN, AND PRM
INFO IIP/T/ES
EMBASSIES FOR PAOS, IOS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: OIIP PREL SMIG KPAO HO
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION ON QUARANTINE NOVEMBER 14, 2005



1. On 11/14 the Tegucigalpa-based liberal daily "La
Tribuna" published an editorial entitled "Quarantine." "We
have said recently that we need to worry about the large
number of deportees from the United States that have
returned to Central American countries. Especially
Honduras, with 14,905 deportees this year who have been
returned because they were not legally in the United States
and did not possess papers to benefit from the TPS.

"We have to add to this number 61,389 Hondurans who have
been returned from Guatemala and Mexico who were en route to
the `American Dream.' Excluded are those who never arrived
anywhere, asphyxiated within the cars of a train, suffocated
by the heat, or victims of other mishaps encountered on
their paths."

"Some of these deportees were captured because they were
involved in activity that was against the law, or drug
trafficking, murder, and other crimes. This is a grave
situation because the gangs in Central America are linked to
exactly these types of circumstances. Immigrants who left
for the States applied what they had learned in the ghettos
of Honduras to new locales and when they ran into the law
they were deported."

"What has always intrigued us is that, if many of these
deportees are caught because of violations of the law, why
isn't a system of quarantine established? The expansion of
gangs in Central America is clearly linked to the number of
deportees. This is made worse still by the potential for
these gangs to have links to terrorist groups."

Ford