Free Republic

GUATEMALA CITY — About 45 minutes before descent, the guards went up and down the aisle unshackling the passengers, and the mood in the cabin began to lighten. A mother with a boy near the front was still crying, but they were the only family aboard the flight. Nearly all the other 93 deportees were men, and they began joking and talking excitedly. Soon Guatemalan territory appeared below, misty and green. A cheer rose. “You see? They’re smiling!” said Matt Albence, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who spends a great deal of time defending his agency’s...

BAGHDAD, Nov. 22 -- Iraqis are returning to their homeland by the hundreds each day, by bus, car and plane, encouraged by weeks of decreased violence and increased security, or compelled by visa and residency restrictions in neighboring countries and the depletion of their savings. Those returning make up only a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million Iraqis who have fled Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But they represent the largest number of returnees since February 2006, when sectarian violence began to rise dramatically, speeding the exodus from Iraq. Many find a Baghdad they no longer recognize, a...