Mexican authorities have demolished dozens of abandoned homes in a village on the U.S. border that was one of the major hubs for smugglers hauling drugs and for illegal migrants sneaking into the United States, Reuters reported today. After pressure from New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, bulldozers flattened 34 adobe and stone built houses in Las Chepas, a semi-abandoned village just south of the border with New Mexico, "The houses were all abandoned buildings used by smugglers and people traffickers for shelter, the rest of the village remains intact," state public safety agency spokesman Carlos Gonzalez told Reuters. Richardson and Chihuahua state Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza agreed last month to raze the derelict buildings as part of a bilateral effort to crack down on smuggling across the remote stretch of desert border. Border Patrol agents say rural areas along the 2,400-mile (3,200-km) U.S.-Mexico border have seen a rise in illegal immigration in recent years because traditional immigrant routes around border cities have been cut off by beefed-up patrol efforts. --More 2151 Local Time 1851 GMT
