By RICARDO SANDOVAL
Herald Foreign Staff

MATAMOROS, Mexico -- With more than a half million Central Americans
eager to flee their hurricane-ravaged homelands, immigration experts fear the
deadliest summer yet for undocumented people trying to cross into the United
States through the blazing deserts of the Southwest.

A new survey by the Gallup Organization of Costa Rica for the U.S.
Information Agency reports that 600,000 adults in Honduras, Nicaragua,
Guatemala and El Salvador are willing to brave the treacherous, 1,000-mile
journey through Mexico to find work in the United States.

The USIA commissioned the survey to try to gauge the potential impact of last
fall's Hurricane Mitch on the United States. Gallup did in-person interviews
Feb. 20-25 with a representative sample of 1,000 people over age 18 in those
countries.

The survey's authors said, however, that many won't make it to the United
States because the journey is difficult and costly and there are tough
anti-immigrant patrols by police to their north in Guatemala, Mexico and the
United States.

Still, experts believe many will try, because 292,000 have already left the four
countries since Hurricane Mitch struck, according to the survey. Most are said
to have headed for the United States.

No increase for Florida

Immigration authorities say they have seen no significant increase in the
numbers of undocumented Central Americans reaching Florida since
Hurricane Mitch. Eventually, though, they expect at least some will make their
way to the state, drawn by agricultural jobs and existing communities,
especially from Nicaragua and Honduras.

``Our numbers don't indicate any substantial increase at present,'' said Keith
Roberts, assistant chief at the Border Patrol's Florida sector office. ``But
because we are a destination, I think we would be a recipient of a portion of
those numbers.''

The survey comes as U.S. immigration officials are having increasing success in
closing off the southernmost part of the U.S.-Mexico border. The area around
the cities of Brownsville and McAllen, Texas, is the nearest crossing point into
the United States for Central American immigrants. Nationwide, 6,555
non-Mexican immigrants were apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol in the
three months that ended Jan. 31, about 46 percent more than in the
comparable period a year earlier.

The Border Patrol's clampdown in Texas is pushing immigrants westward,
while a similar press around San Diego is propelling them to the east -- toward
more-remote desert regions in which the Mexican government estimates that
350 undocumented immigrants died last year.

Charles Roth, a lawyer with Proyecto Libertad, an immigrants rights group in
Brownsville, worries that the migrating Central Americans are less savvy about
the dangers than Mexican migrants and thus probably more willing to try to
cross the desert on foot in summer.

Deadliest summer

``If the [U.S. government] report becomes reality, we could see the deadliest
summer yet along the border,'' Roth said.

Soon after Mitch killed an estimated 9,000 people and left as many as half a
million homeless in Central America, an estimated 3.5 percent of Honduras'
adult population -- 106,000 people -- is said to have left, according to
relatives quizzed in the USIA survey. Another 79,000 left Nicaragua.

Thousands were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. But those who
arrived before Jan. 1 won permission for temporary stays from the Clinton
administration.

A $350 million U.S. aid package for hurricane victims aimed in part at keeping
Central Americans from emigrating clearly has not been enough, said Claudia
Gonzalez, a paralegal who counsels immigrants detained by the Immigration
and Naturalization Service at the Port Isabel Processing Center near
Brownsville. The facility now holds about 500 Central Americans.

``Many who have come since Jan. 1 think they'll get the same right to stay and
work for a while,'' Gonzalez said. ``I believe the government will have to
extend them protective status. These are clearly victims of Mitch who've lost
everything. They have nothing and even their own countries don't want them
back.''

Undocumented immigrants crossing the river from Matamoros to Brownsville
are met by a 10-mile string of powerful floodlights, observation towers and
fast boats piloted by agents wearing night-vision goggles.

Perhaps as a result, Border Patrol agents near here say they're already hearing
of immigrants classified as ``Other Than Mexican'' caught trying to cross in
west Texas and New Mexico. Traditionally, most undocumented Central
Americans simply waded across the Rio Grande here at Matamoros.

Undocumented immigrants as young as 10 and as old as 50 -- well outside the
usual age range -- have been caught.

Herald staff writer Andres Viglucci contributed to this report.
 

                     Copyright 1999 Miami Herald