Mexicali Has Become 'City of the Deported' as US Dumps More People There Nick Miroff - The Washington Post
go to original January 17, 2014

The city of Mexicali is the main drop-off point for the thousands of Mexicans deported from the US every year. But since most of them show up there broke with nowhere else to go, a local businessman decided to do something to help them. Al Jazeera's Adam Raney reports from Mexicali. (AlJazeeraEnglish)

MEXICALI — In this fertilizer-scented city opposite the alfalfa fields of California’s Imperial Valley, the deported sleep in parks, abandoned buildings and along the train tracks that run through town.

They beg for pesos at traffic lights, squinting in the low winter light, and cluster along blighted downtown streets of dim cantinas and discount pharmacies that advertise cheap Levitra and powdered cobra venom. Dressed in oversized American clothing handed out by church shelters, they look dusty and dazed, like shipwrecked castaways.

The Mexican government considers them “repatriated” persons and offers aid services and free or discounted bus tickets to their home towns in the country’s interior. But many do not get on the bus.
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“We’re getting a reputation as a place full of deportees,” said Mexicali’s city manager, Jose Arango. “They’re sent here, and when they can’t get back to the United States, they get stuck.”

Once, border cities like Mexicali (population 700,000) were flooded with newcomers trying to go north. Today, they are filling with obstinate deportees, cut off from U.S.-born children, jobs and car payments, adrift in a kind of stateless purgatory that is beyond the United States but not really in Mexico either. They face a U.S. border that is tougher and more expensive to cross than ever.

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