US embassy cable - 05TEGUCIGALPA2404

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