This week, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol announced that the agency would be ending a seven year practice of using air flights to repatriate undocumented immigrants into the interior of the country. While most undocumented Mexican immigrants apprehended by CBP officers are returned near the U.S.-Mexico border, each year Border Patrol attempts to return a small number to cities in the country’s interior. Since 2004, approximately 125,000 immigrants apprehended in Arizona have been repatriated to Mexico through air flights. The last of these flights took place in the summer of 2011.
