TIJUANA, Mexico, Aug. 25, 2008
Back At Home, Deported Mexicans Struggle
U.S. Deportations Have Skyrocketed Since 2003; Most Of Those Are Returned To Mexico
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(CBS/AP)
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'Return To Sender'
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency sweep nets more than 2,100 illegal aliens nationwide.
For those deported from the United States, the words are an unnecessary reminder. Nearly every hour of the day, guards unlock this gate that leads back into Mexico, clicking open the padlocks hung on each side, in each nation.
Every time the gate slams shut, it wipes out a dream, divides a family, ends a life lived in the shadows of the law.
On average, 700 Mexicans expelled from the United States walk through this gate daily, according to Mexican government figures. They include farmers, construction workers, prisoners, nannies, children, entire families.
A few steps from the gate, American tourists pose for photos in front of a stone relief. They are oblivious to the men, women and children sadly shuffling into a homeland many risked their lives to leave.
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U.S. deportations have jumped by more than 60 percent over the past five years. Mexicans accounted for nearly two-thirds of those deportees, helping to roll back one of the biggest migrations of recent history. All along the border, shelters once full of people trying to cross into the United States are now home to thousands of deportees, who sleep on mattresses strewn inches apart on cement floors.
In a week spent at the Tijuana gate, The Associated Press watched busload after busload of deportees arrive, some in a daze, still stunned over their sudden expulsion. Many stumbled over the Mexican official's question, "Where are you from?" after spending decades in the United States.
The faces of those who stream through reflect how tough and far-reaching the U.S. crackdown on illegal immigration has become.
Among them are young people. There were more than 18,000 repatriations of children under 18 to Mexico this year, and in more than 10,000 cases they were alone, according to the Mexican government.
There are also criminals. The U.S. does not break down figures by country, but it has deported about 55,000 prisoners so far this year. One man walked through the gate in slippers with 80 cents in his pocket, after being picked up by police during a violent fight with his wife in their backyard.
And there are women, with more than 40,000 repatriations since January - about 13 percent of all cases, according to the Mexican government. Sometimes the women are dropped off alone, at night. The U.S. Border Patrol in Washington says the safe repatriation of women is a major concern, but acknowledges there is no overall policy along the 2,000-mile border.
Mexico must now deal with a population that it has long ignored. And those returning must deal with Mexico, a land that for many now seems foreign. The challenge starts the day they walk through the gate the U.S. Border Patrol calls Whiskey II, military code for west of the port of entry.
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Tuesday morning.
At 11:03 a.m., six teenagers - three girls, three boys - line up at the gate, accompanied by a Mexican Consulate official.
"Where are you from?" the Mexican immigration official asks each one after calling off their names.
Paola Riveras' face is puffy and red from crying.
Three hours ago, the 16-year-old had jumped into the long line of Mexicans waiting to go to school, work or shop in California. When it was her turn to stop before the U.S. immigration agent, she panicked and kept walking.
He yelled "Stop!" three times. Finally, he stepped in front of her and told her to put her hands behind her head.
Riveras told him in Spanish that she had no visa and sobbed.
She says she only wanted to see her mom, who went illegally to Los Angeles when Riveras was 8 and left her with her father in Chimalhuacan, a slum outside Mexico City. When he died in December, her mother asked Riveras to come live with her. Now Riveras is not sure what she will do.
In the first six months of this year, 18,249 youths under 18 were sent back to Mexico by the U.S., according to the Mexican government. Those numbers may include youths detained more than once. U.S. immigration authorities say they do not keep figures on minors.
The teens are escorted to a Mexican government trailer where a psychologist and social worker help them call relatives. Some nap on bunk beds covered in Porky Pig and Donald Duck sheets. Others watch "Ice Age" on the TV.
After calling her aunt in Tijuana, Riveras wipes her nose and dries her tears with a tissue. She says she can't go back to Chimalhuacan. She keeps thinking about the explosive fight when her dad's family told her that her mom doesn't want her, that she has formed another family in Los Angeles.
"I just want to study and be with my mom," she says.
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Wednesday morning.
The prisoners arrive at the gate chained together at 10:43 a.m., some still in gray prison pants and black slippers. Once released, they scramble for the pile of paper bags on the ground that contain their few belongings - a belt, diabetes medicine, a few coins.
A Mexican official checks off their names on a clipboard as they file into the country.
The men do not know what they will do next. Residents of the already violent city of Tijuana also wonder what will become of the ex-cons filling the city's shelters.
Almost a third of the 278,000 people deported in 2007 were prisoners. Last year, the U.S. started speeding up the removal of prisoners and deported a record 95,000 after they served their sentences. The U.S. also has detained or deported 10,000 gang members since 2005.
Alejandro Fonseca was convicted on drug charges and deported last year. He now lives in Tijuana with his American wife and three U.S.-born children.
They have survived by eating at the Salvation Army shelter in a rough Tijuana neighborhood near the border. But his 13-year-old daughter has missed a year of school. She cannot go to school in Mexico because she does not speak Spanish.
Fonseca says the new life has been hard on his family, but has also forced him to give up his drug habit.
"A lot of guys try to run the same game that they ran over there, but they end up falling on their face," says Fonseca as he waits for dinner at the Salvation Army shelter.
Fonseca is searching for work in the impoverished city, but even filling out an application is difficult. Fonseca has spent 30 of his 31 years in the United States, so English is his main language.
"You see, we know Spanish, but we don't know the exact words, and when we try to explain to somebody something, they're like 'huh?"' he says.
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Thursday morning.
Battling with crutches, Nestor Ortiz struggles to line up at the gate at 11:30 a.m. after being returned for the third time in 10 days.
Ortiz worked in the U.S. for a decade. Then a police officer pulled him over and found out he had no driver's license, which he couldn't get because he was illegal. The life he had created suddenly ended.
Desperate to be with his family again, he first walked across the desert in Arizona after paying a smuggler US$3,000. The next time, he went in a car driven by an American resident. And then he scaled a 20-foot-high (6.1-meter-high) corrugated metal wall marking the border between Tijuana and San Ysidro and jumped from it.
He winces each time he moves the throbbing leg he crushed. Both his feet are swollen.
Mexican immigration officials help the cabinet finisher from La Habra, California, into the back room of their office.
He still has not had a chance to take off his bracelet from Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, where he woke up this morning, three days after doctors put in a metal plate that runs from his hip to his ankle.
"What can I do? I don't know anyone here," says Ortiz, 39.
An ambulance pulls up to the Mexican Migration Institute's office. Paramedics warn if he does not keep the swelling down, he risks losing his foot.
"They shouldn't have deported you so soon after your surgery," the paramedic tells him.
The divorced father phones his two sons in California.
"I'm not coming back," he says, choked up as he talks to his 17-year-old son by phone from Tijuana's Salvation Army shelter. "I can't walk. Both my feet are in bad shape."
He asks Juan to consider moving to his hometown of Tlalnepantla, on the edge of Mexico City.
The conversation turns tense. Juan has lived in the United States since he was 7 and doesn't want to leave his friends.
"I think you should not be alone over there," Ortiz says, sighing. "Finish high school and then you can come here. At least here you have your grandparents, your cousins. Over there, what do you have?"
Ortiz breathes in deeply, holds his brow and reels in his overwhelming grief.
He tells his other son, 23-year-old Nestor, to cancel his father's gym membership, put the Chevrolet Suburban in his name and take Juan to live with him.
"Be good, son," he says. "Keep working, be careful and keep your chin up."
Around 9:30 p.m. Thursday, six women and a 7-year-old girl arrive at the gate. Migrant activists have repeatedly urged the United States not to deport women and children at night along the violent Mexican border.
Dominga Bejar, 37, stops after walking through the gate blasted by floodlights. She needs a place to stay and is nervous about grabbing a taxi by herself.
"It's really dangerous here," she says. "I'm really scared to go outside."
Blanca Villasenor, who runs a Mexican border shelter, says women are continually dropped off after 9 p.m.
"They deport them at any hour, at 10 p.m., at midnight, and in some cases they wind up in the street or they sleep in the offices of Mexican immigration agents," she says.
Julius Alatorre, an officer for the San Diego border control, says the policy is "to try our best not to bring women or juveniles after dark," but sometimes the women want to go back immediately. The private security firm Wackenhut Corp. transports most of those returned to Mexico, he says. Wackenhut did not respond to requests for comment.
Bejar says she hasn't seen her American-born 15-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter in Montclair, California, since she left them with her husband to attend her father's funeral in January in Colima. Now she is determined to get back to Montclair, where she has lived for 16 years.
"I'm going to cross," she says defiantly after being caught with a fake passport. "I don't know how, but I'm going to make it."
A volunteer with the Casa de Migrante standing at the gate offers her and several deported men a ride to the Tijuana shelter.
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Friday morning.
Ten-year-old Edgar from the Pacific coast state of Michoacan stands at the gate and stares ahead with big brown, panic-stricken eyes. Clutching a Sponge Bob Square Pants comic book - a gift from the Mexican consulate official - he tries to fight back tears. He wants to know where his mom is.
Edgar hasn't seen her since she dropped him off the previous day at a female smuggler's house in Tijuana. They spent the night practicing saying his fake name and answering other basic questions in English.
They got in line at the port of entry around 8 a.m. The smuggler told U.S. officials she was his mom and was taking him to school in San Ysidro. They showed a real visa with Edgar's photo on it.
Edgar didn't flinch and said his name perfectly: Manuel Flores. But then the official asked for his teacher's name, and his grandmother's. Edgar stammered. The official asked them to step aside, and then he detained them.
Maria Guadalupe Rios, coordinator of child protection services in Baja California, says parents no longer want to return to Mexico to visit their children for fear they will not be able to get back across the fortified border. So they are increasingly forcing their children to come live with them illegally in the United States.
If a child is returned to Mexico several times, child protection services takes the child into custody temporarily and talks to the family.
"It's a humiliating experience," she says. "It's a noble thing that they want the family to be reunited, but they are exposing them to danger."
Edgar says his younger siblings recently made it and are with his dad in California. His mom is waiting for him to get across before sneaking in herself. But he's afraid to try again.
"I just want to go back (to Michoacan) with my mom," he says after a social worker contacts his mother.
As Edgar peers from the window of a Mexican government trailer, guards from both countries shut the gate once again - silently closing the door on the American lives of one set of deportees before the next busload arrives.
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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See all 352 CommentsAll that is need to improve the Worker Visa program is require Mexico to work with the American Embassy in Mexico proper to expedite the process. Work and remittances; not family reunification or women leaving their children in Chiapas. Only men to farm the farms. Not contruction of resturants.
WHy won''t that happen? Because then that would make businesses accountable for the safety and welfare of those workers and then possibly taxes and civil repayment for hospitals, schools and other governmental services. Anything to protect the profit of private and public companies'' bank accounts.
ouch.
And the constitutional and moral arugments made by the immigrant advocates and liberals is really wearing thin and off-putting, to say the least. I don''t think Americans owe anyone the right to feed their families outside of the national structure of citizenship and it a state of illegality. Slavery was a moral issue as was civil and women''s rights. This is what a citizen owes other "citizens". Not hte world. It''s this thinking that got us, partitially, into the Iraq mess we''re in today. Let''s export ideas and goodwill; not democracy non-resident rights to amnesty after the fact of an illeagal act.
Posted by onemoretim at 02:43 AM : Aug 25, 2008
They meant, back at Home Depot."
The Mexicans who have come here, gotten citizenship, learned trades and learned to speak English are welcome. Their jobs are as threatened by illegal immigrants as anyone''s.
in the middle of this.The blame belongs to those who do break the Law.Does This Mean we of the human race
should Lack compassion? Epescialy when it comes to the innocent children? Remmember we are a land of immiagrints. If my relatives came over here illegaly
from Ireland,Mexico,Spain,England,The Netherlands. I would only be able to help them return Home and then immigrate here legally if I could. Lets be more
copassionate to all people as the law is enforced.
Remmember this is really a question of enforcing Law not ethnicity.For who of us knows if one of our ancestors didn''t come over illegaly before becoming a
citizen? "COMPASSION"
What is the conflict ? You have seen the problem for yourself, now you know deportation is the answer for illegals.
If Americans really knew how much these leeches cost this country we would all be alarmed .. there is very little info on this .. but one can bet it is in the BILLIONS !!!
All anyone asks is to do it LEGALLY !! If you sneak acroos you do not deserve to be here ... and if you become criminally active ... GO BACK TO MEXICO !!
A bird flies
And sits on a branch
Going across both sides
Of the long wall
It looks in every direction
Not knowing where it is
And flies again against the wind
Looking for another place to land
In the vast empty space many call home
The bird, at night, can hear the leaves fall
Quietly on the raging land
While everyone else sleeps
Not knowing if it is a dream
Or an incubus with wings.
A poem by J. Samara
Posted by MNBrant
No need to feel conflicted. Bottom line. They need to be sent home to fix there problems. We are not responsible for them. If enough of them are sent home, they will press their government to make their lives better in there country. So it is better for all of them, if we step up our efforts to depot even more.
Don''t Care, good riddance!!!!!!
With so many homes to sell, with so many people needing to make money these days, why waste our time with immigrants in this way?
The human mind can be a very clean and orderly place where ideas always work. That''s the easy part.
The challenge is to work with the reality at hand instead of wishing people away regardless of the consequences.
we do not need you,,,
The hard luck stories don''t bother me. They knew they were breaking the law by sneaking over here so they have no right to complain when caught. If they don''t want their families broken up then follow the law. Apply to come here legally and wait your turn.
The people entered here illegally and don''t deserve the respect CBS is hinting they should get.
I could care less if he is hurt and sent back there.He would not have been seriously injured if he had not been jumping off a 20ft wall illegally.
Yet the taxpayers will suck up the cost of his Hospitalization an subsequent surgery.
Personally I think we should build towers with machine guns every 100 ft down the border and shoot every one of them the goes over or under that wall illegally. Once you kill a few of them they will stop trying to get in.
Mexicans need to fight their own government for change and they can''t do that from here.
Reporting Illegal Aliens: A Citizen Takes Up Arms For His Country
http://www.vdare.com/king/citizen_takes_up_arms.htm
New immigration strategy B%u2014 Deport yourself
Agency allows immigrants here illegally to avoid raids, prison by turning selves in
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5914689.html
How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0706/p09s01-coop.html
CNN''S DOBBS ON ''60 MINUTES'': U.S. COULD DEPORT ALL ILLEGALS
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash6.htm
Mexico''s Immigration Law: Let''s Try It Here at Home
Mexico has a single, streamlined law that ensures that foreign visitors and immigrants are:
in the country legally;
have the means to sustain themselves economically;
not destined to be burdens on society;
of economic and social benefit to society;
of good character and have no criminal records; and
contributors to the general well-being of the nation.
The law also ensures that:
immigration authorities have a record of each foreign visitor;
foreign visitors do not violate their visa status;
foreign visitors are banned from interfering in the country%u2019s internal politics;
foreign visitors who enter under false pretenses are imprisoned or deported;
foreign visitors violating the terms of their entry are imprisoned or deported;
those who aid in illegal immigration will be sent to prison.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=14632
DEMONIC-RAT HUSSEIN puts illegals needs ahead of americans,,,
it is the DEMONIC-RATS that want to grant amnesty to illegals,,, including HUSSEIN,,,
HUSSEINs solution for illegals is to grant them amnesty and have americans learn SPANISH,,,
words out of his own mouth,,,
Barack Obama: Your Children Should Learn To Speak Spanish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZprtPat1Vk
Obama to America--Learn Spanish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W7srmHLclw
Well, right here fired Americans struggle because U.S. companies are outsourcing jobs to NON STRUGGLING Mexicans. Why isn''t that a story worth reporting?
(spelling corrected version)
And who payed for that little doctors visit? The American taxpayer, thats who. What makes it even more of a slap to the Americans taxpayers face, is that he was hurt while sneaking into the country.
Stories like this makes it difficult for us to feel much empathy for these people.
And the true tragedy is that these people (the illegals) are unable recognize that.
We have enough problems alrady without taking on Mexico''s plight.
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