Stranded and Alone in Mexico, Deportees Miss the Country They Call Home Caitlin Dickson - Yahoo News
go to original March 9, 2017

Recent immigration raids and highly publicized deportations following President Trump’s executive orders on border security and immigration enforcement are putting a spotlight on a segment of society that’s long lived in the shadows.

But what happens to “the undocumented” once they’ve become “the deported”? Seventy miles south of Tucson and mere steps from the United States border in Nogales, Sonora, a loosely connected community of deportees struggles to survive as strangers in a country that is legally their own but feels nothing like home.

Once a popular destination for day trips or weekend getaways among families and college students from Tucson, Nogales saw traditional tourism dry up following a spate of violence by warring drug cartels in 2008 and 2009. These days, the city is mostly frequented by so-called medical tourists, older, often retired, U.S. citizens who pour across the border from Arizona daily in search of discounted dental services and prescription refills.

Nogales is also the primary dumping ground for native-born Mexicans deported from Arizona. In 2016 alone, the U.S. deported 22,934 Mexican nationals to Nogales, according to Mexico’s National Institute for Migration.

For many immigrants who grew up in the U.S., life after deportation is like living in perpetual purgatory. Rejected by the country they consider home and exiled to a foreign land to which they have little or no personal connection, many describe feeling unwelcome in Mexico and unable to relate to other Mexicans.

Lonely and afraid, few dare venture into the interior of the country, choosing instead to remain near the border and their family on the other side. Simply being in close proximity to the United States also seems to provide some comfort, even if it’s from behind a 15-foot-tall sheet of rust-colored steel rods.

Read the rest at Yahoo News

Related: No Papers, No Help: How the US Legal System Fails Immigrants (Vocativ)

Related: Deported US Vets in Mexico Hope for Return Under Trump Government (Associated Press)

Related: After Decades in America, the Newly Deported Return to a Mexico They Barely Recognize (The Washington Post)

Related: America’s Millions of Mexicans Without Documents Live in Fear of Deportation (The Guardian)

Related: Mexican Teachers Adapt to Their American-Raised Students (PRI's The World)

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