Fellow deportees aid traumatized arrivals
MEXICO CITY — The sliding doors opened, and suddenly Roger Perez was back in Mexico.
Spanish boomed over the airport loudspeaker, and men swaggered past in dusty boots and cowboy hats.
Thanks to U.S. immigration authorities, Perez, 21, had been trapped on a plane for hours with his wrists and ankles shackled. Now, he was a free man. But as a deportee to a country he hadn’t seen since he left as a young child, the freedom felt scary, not sweet.
Trembling, Perez shook the hand of a Mexican government official, who explained how he could apply for unemployment benefits. Then he took a business card offered by Diego Maria. “We’re here to help you,” it read. “Together we’re stronger.”
“Hey, man,” Maria told him in English. “I was deported too.”
Every week, Maria, 36, and other migrants deported from the United States in recent months greet planeloads of people sent back to Mexico City. They call themselves Deportees United in the Fight.
They help new arrivals phone relatives, figure out how to catch a bus and register for the few government benefits available to former migrants. But mostly, they come to show the new deportees that they are not alone.
“Getting deported is the most traumatic experience of your life,” said Maria, who lived in the U.S. for 17 years before he was deported last summer. Perez nodded nervously. “My parents and siblings all live in North Carolina,” Perez said softly, his English inflected with a gentle Southern lilt. “It’s pretty rough.”
Deportees United is among a handful of grass-roots groups that have formed in recent years to help a growing number of deportees to Mexico. Since 2009, more Mexicans have been departing from the U.S. than arriving there, according to the Pew Research Center, a reverse migration trend driven by job loss after the Great Recession and an increase in deportations under President Barack Obama.
In the first four months of this year, more than 50,000 Mexicans have been repatriated, according to the Mexican government, a deportation rate similar to that of the last year of Obama’s presidency.
For years, Mexican officials largely ignored return migra- tion. But since President Trump started lobbing attacks at Mexican immigrants and stepped up deportations, Mexican elected leaders have responded with efforts to help immigrants living illegally in the U.S., as well as those sent home. They have staged news conferences at the airport to greet planeloads of deportees, and have aired ads promoting the integration of returning migrants.
Despite the rhetoric, few services are available for migrants coming home. Although deportees can receive six months of help — they are eligible for $100 monthly unemployment checks — that’s about it, said Monica Jacobo, who studies return migration at Mexico City’s Center for Research and Teaching in Economics.
“I don’t see any serious planning from the government,” Jacobo said, adding that returning migrants often have a difficult time finding work, enrolling in school and reintegrating into communities that often view them as foreigners. Because U.S. leaders have insisted that they mainly deport migrants with criminal convictions — despite data that show large numbers of deportees have little or no criminal history — deportees also carry a stigma: that they are all delinquents.
Deportees United organized to fill what it sees as a clear void. Mexican migrants working in the U.S. send home billions of dollars each year, and the group believes deportees should be treated with respect, not as outcasts. It hopes to open a shelter where deportees can spend a few days adjusting before restarting their lives. With the help of small donations, it recently opened a screen-printing business that will employ only deportees. Among the items printed at the small workshop are shirts that say, “Deportees are not criminals.”
The group was organized in December by Maria and other recent deportees who had been invited to a government event announcing efforts to integrate returnees into the workforce. One of them, Ana Laura Lopez, had been an immigrants rights activist in Chicago, and suggested they organize. She says the group might not have existed if it weren’t for the increased activism and heightened political awareness of Latinos in the U.S. in recent years.
Maria said he gained a sense of political empowerment in the U.S.: “We learned there that we can defend our rights.”
He grew up in the verdant fields of Hidalgo, a state in central Mexico, in a dirt-poor indigenous family that couldn’t afford shoes for the children. At 13, he went to work as a street vendor in Mexico City to send money home.
In 2000, when he was 18, he crossed illegally into the United States. Maria lived in North Carolina, and then moved to Dalton, Ga., where he drove a forklift for several of the city’s famous carpet factories. It was good work. With the help of a fake Social Security card, he made $15 an hour. Overtime, too.
He married and had a kid, and later won custody of his son after he split with his wife. One day last year, he was driving back to work after stopping at home to have lunch with his son when he was pulled over at a police checkpoint. Officers were asking for licenses. Maria didn’t have one.
He was taken to the police station, where a 2003 felony conviction for domestic violence with a previous girlfriend flagged him for removal under Obama’s revised deportation priorities. Maria never saw his son again. The boy, Shamus, now 5, lives with an aunt.