The Human Cost of Deportation Policy: A Daily Cross-Border Commute teleSUR
go to original January 30, 2017

Yemilet Ponce leaves her house around 5 a.m. every day to cross the international bridge from Tijuana, Mexico to the U.S. to attend high school. Ponce, a U.S. citizen, has to live on the Mexican side of the border since her mom was deported two years ago.

“I wake up at 4:30 in the morning... gotta get ready and rush and have to be out of the house by 5:00 a.m.,” says 17-year-old Ponce. "There are some days that I wake up at 4:30 a.m. and there is not much line so sometimes I go back to sleep and wake up at 5:00-5:30 a.m. and go to school.”

Yemilet has to do this because her mother, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, was deported two years ago for what she calls a "white-collar crime." Now, the mother and daughter live in Tijuana. The teen was born in the U.S. and has decided to make this tedious journey every day in order to have better educational opportunities and remain close to her family.

As a candidate, former President Barack Obama promised immigration reform. However, he actually deported 2.7 million people, an average of about a thousand immigrants a day during his eight years as president. There are an estimated 4.5 million children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents. Each year, thousands of mothers and fathers are deported, forcing these parents to choose between uprooting their kids or splitting up their family.

Things seem to only be getting worse for families such as Ponce's now that Donald Trump has become president. The real estate mogul is already working to turn his promise of a “big, beautiful wall” into reality through an executive order. Trump has also instructed immigration officials to expand the number and size of detention facilities that hold asylum seekers and people awaiting hearings in immigration court.

These policies are not just written on a piece of paper; they have real consequences on people's lives.

Read the rest at teleSUR

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