In Tijuana's 'El Bordo', Mexicans Deported by US Struggle to Find 'Home' Sam Quinones - National Geographic
go to original November 22, 2014

Many men deported from the U.S. to Tijuana wind up homeless and living in an area along the Tijuana River called El Bordo, where drugs are openly sold. (Eros Hoagland/National Geographic)

TIJUANA, Mexico — On the U.S. side of the border, an immigration officer unlocked a padlock on a metal door. On the other side, a Mexican officer unlocked another padlock. With that bit of antiquated protocol, the metal door opened, and Antonio Gomez stepped back into the country he'd fled as a boy.

It was the first time Gomez had been in Mexico in 34 years.



...Gomez, a thin, polite man with glasses and a mustache, spent his first night in Tijuana with a hundred other recent deportees in Casa del Migrante. "I don't know what pesos are," he said. "I feel like I'm in a dream, in another world."

It's a world in which tens of thousands of traumatized deportees like Antonio Gomez have been dropped in Tijuana and have stayed.

In the last five years, the United States has deported record numbers of immigrants, including roughly 250,000 to 300,000 each year to Mexico. Mexico has 15 repatriation points, but one-third of all deportees are usually sent to Baja California, and half come through Tijuana - from 100 to 300 every day, officials here say.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama announced a reprieve for more than 4 million immigrants in the United States illegally, primarily parents of children who are citizens or legal residents. The step, which the president said he took because Congress has failed to act, will slow deportations to Mexico. But it comes too late for Gomez and others already in Tijuana.

Read the whole story at National Geographic

Life in the Deportee Slums of Mexico (vice)

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