Tijuana, Mexico — Just three miles across the U.S.-Mexico border from San Diego, deportees in Tijuana are starting a new life. Among them is Juan Carlos, an immigrant from Mexico who had lived in the U.S. for 19 years. On June 24, his construction crew stopped at a Home Depot in the City of Industry, California — near Los Angeles — to pick up supplies when he was cornered by federal immigration agents.
“As soon as I saw them, I tried to run,” said Juan Carlos, who lived in the U.S. for 19 years. and whose arrest was captured on cell phone video.
He says he spent two weeks in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention before agreeing to sign deportation paperwork.
“What really got to me was I’m sure they had a gut feeling, maybe not to go out that day, but they needed the money,” she said.
In January, the Mexican government announced they had set up shelters along the border with the U.S. preparing for a massive wave of deportees. One of the facilities, Flamingo’s, used to be an event space. Pricila Rivas is a binational deportee coordinator for Al Otro Lado, the only nonprofit allowed into the Flamingo’s facility.
Rivas says the facility has a capacity of 3,000, but has only held about 100 people at a time.
“It’s like a processing station where folks are able to obtain a copy of their birth certificate and basic identity documents,” Rivas explained.
Rivas helps the newly-deported integrate into their new life in Mexico — offering guidance on applying for work, finding shelter, and getting in touch with loved ones.
But she says not all deportees are being sent to sites where there are resources.
“There’s flights going to Tapachula, to the southern border of Mexico,” Rivas said. “So I mean, what happens to the folks that are being deported to other places.”
Even as ICE agents get more aggressive with their tactics, the mass deportations President Trump promised haven’t fully materialized.
One of those who chose to self-deport is Uliser, an immigrant from Cuba. At the age of 15, he fatally shot someone and spent the next 19 years in a U.S. prison before being released in 2024. He was issued a deportation order shortly after, and had been attending immigration check-ins regularly. But as immigration enforcement ramped up in the U.S., he worried he might be detained. And since Cuba is not accepting deportees, there was a risk he’d be sent elsewhere.
“It was a high risk of me, of the United States sending me to Salvador or South Sudan,” he says, ” it was an easy choice… letting them send me to a country where I had, no, I didn’t have the choice to go to or just deciding, coming over here to Mexico where I’m gonna have better opportunities in life.”
Uliser says he feels remorse when stories like to admonish immigrants.
Uliser was able to train for a new career as a sales development representative in the months since his release. And he’s hoping to be a support system for others starting over in Mexico.
“There’s a lot of people that are coming,” he added. “They’re going to be coming out from prison, even deported here to Mexico. And if I can be of help in any way I can, I’m going to continue to do the same thing in honor of my victim and his family.”
Margaret Brennan and
Camilo Montoya-Galvez
contributed to this report.
