Horcon Tract

 region, interesting place, draw only border, do not draw title

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This area roughly outlines the Horcon Tract, the inside of a Rio Grande River oxbow bend.

Under the 1884 treaty, if the river shifted, Mexico became owner of land newly south of the river. But not if the shift was manmade. In 1906 the International Boundary Commission levied a fine against the American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation Co. for cutting across the oxbow neck (top of right box), causing the river to abandon the old channel, still faintly visible inside the two boxes. Land inside the old channel was thus US soil, but this fact was soon forgotten.

In the 1930's and 1040's as the town of Rio Rico sprung up, residents in the SE part of town were unknowingly being born on US soil. To this day, some of these residents occasionally apply for US citizenship on the grounds that they were born in the US, grounds upheld in a Horcon Tract immigration panel decision of 1980. Over 250 have been successful. There have been attempts to abuse this geographic anomaly by people from all around Latin America (and even from India) claiming to have been born in the Horcon Tract part of Rio Rico, and a fake "Rio Rico" birth certificate industry sprung up.

In a 1972 treaty, the US ceded this tract to Mexico.