Mexico City, Dec 28 (IANS/EFE) Three Cuban nationals escaped from a National Migration Institute, or INM, facility in central Mexico, officials said.
Yoel Francisco Escalante Machado, Roxana Alfonso Roche and Jose Miguel Falla Yera got out of the facility, the INM said.

The Cubans were being held at the INM detention centre in Queretaro, a city located northwest of Mexico City.

An international alert has been declared “to achieve the quick recovery of the Cuban citizens”, the INM said, adding that the escape was “an isolated incident”.

The immigration service said it would “not tolerate corruption inside the institution”.

This was not the first escape by Cubans this year from an INM facility.

Eight Cubans got out of the INM detention centre in the southern city of Chetumal in August, but six of them were later recaptured.

A group of suspected people traffickers intercepted a bus carrying 33 Cubans under INM custody in 2008.

Some of the Cubans turned up several weeks later in Texas.

Cubans enter Mexico illegally in an effort to make their way to the US.

Mexico and Cuba signed an immigration agreement in October 2008 aimed at guaranteeing a legal, orderly and safe migration flow.

The pact calls for Havana to take back all illegal Cuban immigrants detained by Mexican authorities.

Previously, the island’s government took back illegal emigrants detained on the high seas, but it refused to accept Cubans detained on Mexican soil while en route to the US.

Under Washington’s “wet foot, dry foot” policy, Cubans who reach US soil are permitted to remain and become legal residents, while the vast majority of those intercepted at sea are sent back to the island.

Havana says the US policy encourages Cubans to undertake risky voyages to Florida and, in recent years, to Mexico’s Caribbean coast.

–IANS/EFE

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