Last week we told you that not everyone crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S. is necessarily a Mexican immigrant. Via The Latin Americanist, Reuters reports on the phenomenon of “OTM” (“other than Mexican”) immigrants claiming to be Mexican in order to be deported to Mexico, rather than their home countries:

Non-Mexican Hispanics entering the United States illegally are studying up on Mexican history and geography, even learning to whistle the national anthem, to beat U.S. plans to fly them home.

Stop right there. Is this working? If so, we’ve got some dumb Border Patrol officials on the beat.

…so-called Other Than Mexican, or OTM, illegal immigrants mostly from Central America, are increasingly being flown back hundreds of miles to their home countries, which can effectively end their dream of entering the United States to earn a better life.

So, many pretend to be Mexicans.

“We heard we could be sent back to our own countries, so many of us are trying to pass ourselves off as Mexicans,” Honduran Jorge Alberto Carvajal, 38, said as he stood with a group of Central American migrants outside a shelter in this sweltering city south of Laredo, Texas.

It’s no surprise that this is happening. If you were planning to immediately try to re-enter the U.S. after deportation, it’s much easier to do so from Mexico than after being flown off to say, Brazil, only to start the whole grueling process over again. But a Brazilian — or even an Ecuatoriano — sucessfully passing himself as Mexican?

Border Patrol spokeswoman Maria Valencia said it was common for agents to encounter OTMs attempting to pass themselves off as fellow Spanish-speaking Mexicans, and said some agents might be successfully tricked.

“Definitely … Some might fool us to believe they are Mexicans, especially when we are overwhelmed and we are trying to process a large, large group,” she said by telephone from Washington.

I guess in the eyes of La Migra, everyone’s the same.

Via / The Latin Americanist and Reuters

Photo: Guatemalan immigrants in Mexico, via The Houston Chronicle