Arizona Daily Star, 9/30/11
Nearly 9,000 illegal border crossers took free flights home to Mexico City this summer in the eighth annual edition of a binational program aimed at saving lives.
The final flight of the Mexican Interior Repatriation Program left Tucson on Wednesday with 139 people aboard, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Vincent Picard.
The 8,893 people who participated are the fewest since the program was launched in 2004. At least 10,500 had participated each year, with a record 23,384 taking the flights in 2010, government figures show.
Posted by mexicoinstitute 
