SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – A Cuban swimming coach who fled his homeland will be tried on immigration charges for allegedly trying to sneak his Cuban wife into El Salvador (news – web sites), officials said Thursday.
Jose Guillermo Herrera, 36, was hired as a swimming coach by El Salvador’s National Institute of Sports in 1999, but announced three years later he was staying here for good and instead of returning to his homeland.
Investigators say that Herrera’s wife Yusmara Alvarez, 32, flew from Cuba to the northern city of San Pedro Sula in neighboring Honduras last week and joined a group of Salvadoran swimmers in town for a one-day event.
Herrera is accused of dressing his wife in athletes’ clothing and placing her on a Salvadoran sports federation bus with other swimmers as a means of sneaking her into this country.
Border officials noticed Alvarez in a group of female swimmers, many of whom were under 18, and also noticed that the number of the people on the bus exceeded how many migration forms its passengers had filled out when crossing into Honduras by one.
Both Herrera and Alvarez were arrested by members of the Salvadoran national police force in El Poy, a town near the Honduran border.
Herrera faces up to eight months in prison and also could eventually be deported back to Cuba.
