TAPACHULA, Mexico: Jailed repeatedly for his political views, Ethiopian immigrant Sharew paid smugglers around $10,000 to move him through a dozen countries and leave him a year later in the grubby southern Mexican city of Tapachula.

Once on Mexico’s southern border, which has grown into a major stepping-stone for hundreds of migrants fleeing conflicts in the Horn of Africa, he was still 3,200 km away from his destination: the United States.

The immigrants, mainly from Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea, are increasingly following a new, epic route down the continent to South Africa, across the Atlantic by boat or plane and then a trek overland though South and Central America.

"It is an enormous voyage. They’ve told us that along the way some lose their lives in Africa because they are attacked, sometimes even by lions," said Jorge Yzar, head of Tapachula’s detention center, where dozens of immigrants from all over the world sleep in dormitories before being deported or let go.

Risking jail or even death, their lengthy trip by plane boat, truck, bus and foot can cost thousands of dollars – some pay as much as $20,000 – often borrowed from relatives.

While experts say illegal immigration by Latin Americans has fallen as the economic crisis bites and jobs dry up in the United States, East Africans are coming in increasing numbers to try to find a better life.

African immigrants have traditionally sought jobs in European countries near the Mediterranean Sea like Spain, Italy and France but governments have tried to discourage the inflow by offering financial incentives for migrants to return home.

"After a journey like this you realize there is no safe haven anywhere in the world. Only the strong survive it," Sharew, 29, said sipping a warm soda in a Tapachula diner.

After dodging authorities across three continents, immigrants like Sharew receive some respite in Mexico.

Thanks to a legal window for immigrants from conflict zones, citizens from Horn of Africa countries hand themselves over to Mexican officials in return for a 30-day pass that eases the last leg of their months-long odyssey.

The small number of Africans passing through the Tapachula detention center jumped to more than 600 last year, three times as many as in 2007, said Yzar. Before 2004, no Africans are recorded in Mexico’s official statistics.

The Africans tend to be well-dressed, educated and upwardly mobile young adults and stand out from the often impoverished Central Americans who flow through Tapachula by the thousands on their way northward.

Under Mexican law, immigrants who show up from certain places with violent conflicts are given a temporary permit, but most stay only a few days, long enough to get to the US-Mexico border and ask for asylum or try crossing illegally.

After wading through the shallow, muddy river that divides Mexico and Guatemala and spending two-weeks in the Tapachula detention center, Sharew – a student who said he disagreed with the Ethiopian government – and a dozen or so immigrants released at the same time bought plane tickets to northern Mexico.

With the daunting illegal crossing of the US-Mexico border still to come, most of the migrants said the worst was already behind them.

International human smuggling rings use local traffickers in each country to shuttle the migrants across borders from Africa to Latin America using fake documents, border security blind spots and corrupt officials.

The migrants are fleeing Somalia, wracked by factional violence since a dictatorship collapsed in 1991, mandatory military service in Eritrea, or protests in Ethiopia after post-election violence killed close to 200 people in 2005.

Many arrive from Africa by boat or plane to Brazil or Ecuador, where visa restrictions are lax, and then they move overland thousands of km, often robbed or abandoned by handlers along the way.

Not all countries have laws like Mexico and in many places immigrants can languish in jails for months.

Reuters