Mexico supports its ‘migrant heroes’ in the U.S., but ignores them when they get deported back

Each month this year, the United States has deported 15,000 migrants to Mexico. They join some 2.5 million others who have returned over the past decade — some forced to leave by deportation orders, others by economic and political conditions.

Back in the country of their birth, however, they face discrimination and exclusion anew. Nancy Landa, a young woman living in Tijuana after being deported in 2009, put it plainly when she made her story public: “Sometimes I feel that I have been more accepted in the U.S. even as undocumented, than how I have been accepted here as a Mexican national.”

The Mexican government makes bold promises to protect the rights and dignity of its citizens abroad, and its 50 consulates in the United States provide documents and legal guidance, as well as health, education, English language and even naturalization services. But that attentiveness does not extend to the Mexican side of the border. Deportees and returnees are no longer treated as “migrant heroes” — as Mexican politicians often refer to them — when they arrive at repatriation centers: All they get in terms of government support is a phone call, a repatriation certificate and a bus ticket.

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