The last time Diego Miguel María saw his son, he was driving him home from breakfast. A routine traffic checkpoint caught him by surprise. María had been living in the U.S. for 17 years as an undocumented immigrant and didn’t have a license. He was immediately taken into custody.
A family friend came to pick up María’s son. That was in early 2016.
The 36-year-old father was transferred to an immigration detention center where he spent four months before being deported to Mexico. His son was always on his mind. When would he be able to hug him again? Why did his son think he hadn’t visited?
When the chartered flight full of deportees touched the ground, in a country he hadn’t been in since he was a teenager, María thought, “I’d rather die than be here.”
María isn’t alone in having these thoughts, as he’d soon learn. More than 128,000 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. in the fiscal year ending in September 2017. It is unlikely they will ever be able to return to the U.S., where many had jobs and a family. Facing this reality can lead to feelings of hopelessness, depression, and even suicide.
Earlier this year, Guadalupe Olives Valencia, a 44-year-old father of three, killed himself by jumping off a bridge near the Tijuana-San Diego border, just hours after he was deported. The Guardian reported that, according to relatives, he was worried about supporting his children in the U.S. from Mexico.
A recent study shows that at least 20 percent of deportees need psychological help. But a strapped Mexican government is ill-equipped to deal with the problem — especially as President Donald Trump’s administration threatens to dramatically increase deportations.
Many deportees have spent decades outside of Mexico and left their whole family in the U.S. Stuck in what can feel like a foreign land without a support system, desperate deportees are turning to each other — as María would soon discover.
On a recent Thursday afternoon at the Museum of Tolerance in downtown Mexico City, about a dozen deportees were sketching self-portraits. After that, they were instructed to write down the rights they’re entitled to. Men and women, ranging in age from their late thirties to early fifties, carefully jotted words like migration, family unification, and happiness. The exercise is part of an effort to heal the wounds of discrimination and rid deportees of feelings of hopelessness they have experienced as a result of these rights being violated.
The workshop was organized by Deportados Unidos en la Lucha (Deportees United in the Fight). María had been attending their weekly sessions since he co-founded the organization in late 2016. It is one of a growing number of deportee support groups, mainly founded by deportees themselves.
Some of their acts seem minuscule, but are borne from direct experience. For instance, the group greets deportees at the airport each week with drawstring backpacks. Deportees often arrive without anything to put their belongings in, so the group decided to provide it for them. They are a friendly face at the airport, there to help however they can, whether that means tracking down family members or offering a free place to stay.
“We’ve all had the same experience and that serves us to be able to help each other out and to be able to accept what has happened,” says María.
He’s been able to talk about family separation, the shock of coming back to Mexico, and the discrimination that deportees face. With a style of dressing and talking influenced by U.S. culture, María admits that it is easy for most Mexicans to identify him as a deportee. He often feels treated like a criminal, since Mexicans often assume deportees committed a crime that led to their forced return. His friends from Deportados Unidos en la Lucha understand how degrading this can feel.
Having even a single person to talk to has been proven to help prevent suicide. Without each other, many deportees often do not even have that. Returning migrants have often lost contact with any family members still in Mexico, if they have any family there at all.
“I have some family here, but for me, my true family is my son, who is there,” María says. “The most difficult part has been not being able to communicate with my son.”
As discussion at the Thursday workshop progressed, deportees shared their frustrations with a government that is at best overwhelmed, and at worst apathetic to the struggles of returnees.
“The government promises us so many things after we return, but that’s all they are: promises,” says Eleazar Hernández, a 47-year-old who returned to Mexico in 2015 after living in Wisconsin for 17 years. He is a co-founder of Deportados Unidos en la Lucha, along with María and other deportees. Heads nodded around the room. In a meeting full of deportees, his comment doesn’t need further explanation.
The Mexican government has pledged to help deportees reintegrate into society, particularly since U.S. President Donald Trump took office. Trump rose to the presidency on an anti-immigrant platform that was particularly harsh towards Mexican immigrants, whom he called “rapists” and blamed for bringing drugs and crimes into the country. In the first year of Trump’s presidency, more than 226,000 people were deported, with Mexico receiving more deportees than any other nation.
Hundreds of thousands of people were deported each year during the Obama administration as well, earning him the title of “deporter-in-chief” by immigrant rights groups. The year 2012 saw a record high of 34,000 people being deported each month, according to Politico, compared to just 19,000 people each month in Trump’s first year. In an October 2017 report, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attributed this downward trend to a decrease in border apprehensions, which lead to expedited removal. But immigration arrests have increased under Trump. The legal process to remove an immigrant after an arrest that occurs outside a border region can take months or even years, meaning that the full effect of Trump’s immigration policy may not be felt yet.
In response, Mexico has pledged to offer more support for deportees. Official statements from the Mexican government give the impression that deportees can count on their country to help them out, but the reality is different.
“You are not alone. Don’t feel abandoned. The doors to your house will always be open,” Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto said to a group of deportees he greeted upon arrival in February 2017, according to Mexican media outlet La Jornada.
The government’s Somos Mexicanos (We are Mexicans) program promises to ease the transition for repatriated Mexicans by addressing basic needs and reintegrating deportees into society. However, this initiative has been criticized for being all talk. Through the program, the National Migration Institute gives shelter and food to deportees when they return, helps them connect with family, and assists them in getting their Mexican identification card. Associations of deportees report that this process rarely goes smoothly. Deportees report particular difficulty getting government help finding a job or accessing higher education.
When it comes to psychological needs of deportees, various agencies report addressing the problem, but the numbers don’t add up to the estimated need — especially given that nearly one million Mexicans were deported from 2013 to 2016, and approximately one in five require psychological support.
In 2010, the government opened a hotline for migrants and deportees called “Línea Migrante” or “Migrant Line,” which since opening has received and attended more than 100,000 calls, including but not limited to psychological support. Meanwhile, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México has set up a mental health clinic at the airport, which has attended to more than 7,000 people since it began in 2011.
Deportees certainly don’t think the current resources are sufficient. “Psychologists have not helped us, even though we are not well psychologically,” says Hernández, one of the other founders of Deportados Unidos en la Lucha.
The problem is that mental health falls by the wayside when deportees have so many other pressing needs, says Lorena Guzman Elizalde, a researcher at the University of Sussex who has studied reintegration services for returning migrants in Mexico and Central America. “They are in survival mode, just trying to access a job, trying to access university, trying to get their children back in Mexico. It’s an emergency situation, but it never ends.”
Feelings of despondency can extend even to those who returned to Mexico voluntarily.
Maggie Loredo was 18 and living in northern Georgia when she started to understand how her undocumented status could prevent her from accessing higher education. She wanted to study visual arts at Dalton State College near her family, but she didn’t qualify for financial aid and knew that her family couldn’t pay out of pocket.
“It was a semi-voluntary return,” she says. “Because if there had been more opportunities for me in the U.S. I wouldn’t have come back.”
So, in 2008, Loredo returned to Mexico by herself. Immediately, she regretted it.
“My first years I was in a complete depression,” Loredo says. She had been in the U.S. since she was two years old and she didn’t feel accepted or understood in San Luis Potosí, a part of central Mexico where some distant aunts and uncles she barely knew lived.
“I wanted to go back to the U.S. but at that point, there was no going back. Being alone in a state like San Luis Potosí, it was complicated emotionally for me because part of me was rejecting my new reality in Mexico.”
Her education plans faltered when she had trouble getting her U.S. education recognized in Mexico. Plus, her parents and siblings had stayed in the States. Loredo felt completely alone.
“I didn’t have anyone to share all of the emotions and sensations of what it was like to be in Mexico,” she says.
It took her five years to find them, but a community was also what saved Loredo. In 2013, after meeting other returnees when a researcher interviewed them for a book, Loredo founded Otros Dreams en Acción.
“I realized that there were other people who had a similar story to mine and it was from there that my mental health started to change and get better,” says Loredo. “I was in San Luis Potosí thinking that I was the only one in the country who had gone through this.”
The group has ballooned to about 200 members who meet either in person or virtually. Returnees in Mexico City tend to be able to connect in person. But for people who returned to smaller, less cosmopolitan areas of the country, the deportee community may be smaller. Groups like Otros Dreams en Acción are using technology to connect deportees so that they can find each other online.
This sense of understanding is also why, despite the need for professional services, deportees still cling to each other.
Loredo spoke to one psychologist who told her to “get over it.” “I think it’s really important that people have access to this type of professional help, but with people who have been trained and informed about what the social context of immigration implies,” Loredo says.
María had a similar experience. “It kind of bothers me when someone tells you you will be ok and they’ve never gone through anything similar before,” he says. “My family [here in Mexico] expects me to be happy. I don’t think they realize how I feel about my son. They don’t understand. They are never gonna understand.”
María talks to his son, now five years old, at least once a week, usually through Facetime or Facebook calls. He is anxious for his son to visit. As a dual citizen, traveling between the two countries is possible, although it’s difficult since he is still so young. María wants to spend more time with his son, but he’s unsure if he would want him to live in Mexico.
The 36-year-old father worries about his ability to support his son if he came. María estimates that a job in carpeting, the industry where he worked in the U.S., would only pay about 5,000 Mexican pesos per month, or about $260 USD. So instead he is working running a small T-shirt printing business with other deportees from Deportados Unidos en la Lucha. He is still struggling financially, but sees room for growth through the business.
Creating a new life is particularly difficult in a country that doesn’t feel like home. After 17 years, María became accustomed to life in Georgia: his job, the weather, the food. His mouth practically starts to water just reminiscing about eating barbecue ribs. “When I was there, I missed Mexican food,” he says with a laugh, “and now it’s the other way around.”
As time passes, María is coming to terms with his situation. He keeps himself busy printing t-shirts and going to the airport to meet the newly arriving deportees. He wouldn’t call himself happy exactly, but he laughs a little bit more easily.
“I don’t want to be here, obviously, but I don’t have another choice,” María says. “Since we are always active and doing something, the days pass. It’s still complicated, but I think we learn how to live here in Mexico little by little, even though I don’t really want to be here.”
Even as the months of his exile turns into years, María expects his community of deportees will still be the only ones who understand. With the support of other deportees for more than a year now, the 36-year-old no longer reports suicidal thoughts. “Just the fact that you know that someone else understands exactly how you feel, you feel better,” María says. “I feel better.”
