At a time when the hurricane Ike goes to the Gulf of Mexico, emergency authorities in Texas were preparing on Tuesday to order one million people were evacuated from the impoverished region of the Rio Grande Valley.
In addition, tried to persuade tens of thousands of illegal immigrants that has less to fear from the immigration authorities that the storm.
Officials responsible for planning emergency measures met all day to decide whether an evacuation is ordered and when the forced withdrawal of settlers from coastal counties near the border with Mexico.
By owning forecasts showing that Ike could fall to earth this weekend, authorities prepared about 1,000 buses if necessary to move many poor and elderly who do not own cars.
Federal authorities, meanwhile, gave assurances that not reviewed the immigration status of people in areas where they pick up the evacuees or inspection posts.
However, people were skeptical and there were fears that many undocumented would refuse to deal with buses and go to shelters for fear of being arrested and deported.
"People are nervous. The message that I got is that going to be a real problem," said Catholic priest Michael Seifert, an advocate of immigrants.
Another reason for scepticism is that last May the secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, said that the Border Patrol would not do anything to prevent the evacuation in the event of a hurricane, but when Hurricane Dolly came to the Rio Grande Valley at the end of July was not issued any evacuation order mandatory.
As a result, the Border Patrol remained open and review their positions shortly after authorities stopped a van loaded with illegal immigrants.
It would be the first large-scale mandatory evacuation in the history of south Texas. The state and county authorities let people decide for themselves whether they wanted to leave the area until the area shortly before Hurricane Rita hit the Gulf Coast of Mexico in 2005.
But now local authorities can instruct people to leave the danger zone.
At 0000 GMT, the vortex of Ike was located at 153 kilometers (95 miles) west of Havana, Cuba, and was moving west-northwest at 16 kilometers per hour (10 mph) with gusts of wind up to 120 kilometers per hour (75 mph).
It is expected that the storm crossing the Gulf of Mexico and strengthened again into a dangerous Category 3 hurricane that could reach maximum sustained winds of up to 209 kilometers per hour (130 mph)
