Tragedy for ‘Dreamer’

Facing U.S. deportation, teenager killed after returning to Mexico

Mexico was an unfamiliar place for 19-year-old Manuel Antonio Cano-Pacheco. He was only 3 years old when his parents brought him to the United States — without a visa.

In 2015, as a teenager in Des Moines, Iowa, he qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the initiative spearheaded by President Barack Obama to give temporary protection to undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. CanoPacheco gained DACA status and with it, a work permit, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But then he was arrested and convicted on two misdemeanor drug charges. The convictions voided his DACA status, and in 2017, he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Two months ago, facing a high likelihood of being deported, Cano-Pacheco chose to return to Mexico and was soon escorted across the border by ICE deportation officers.

Instead of graduating from high school in Iowa, he returned to an increasingly violent country where he hardly knew anyone, even his relatives, Alejandro Alfaro-Santiz, a pastor in Des Moines who knows the family, told the Washington Post. The relatives he left behind in Iowa worried for his safety, knowing how deportees are often targeted by gangs in Mexico, as news reports have confirmed.

In May, three weeks after arriving in Mexico, Cano-Pacheco was killed in the north-central state of Zacatecas. He had his throat slit while getting food with an acquaintance of his cousin’s, his family and friends told the Des Moines Register.

Verduzco mourned the loss of his friend at the memorial service Sunday. Speaking to the Register, he recalled him as an upbeat, friendly young man with a passion for car mechanics. He had received a scholarship to study the trade at a college in Chicago, Verduzco told the Register.

But he had also been struggling emotionally in recent years, particularly after his father went to prison for drug offenses. He was forced to help support his family. “Things were going downhill. I didn’t know what to do about it,” Verduzco told the Register.

During this time, he also had a baby with his girlfriend, a boy that is now 1 year old.