At Mexico's edge, deported migrants are left in limbo

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Deportees arrive here each day by the hundreds, desperate and destitute, escorted off buses by U.S. immigration agents and marched across the border into Mexico.

Some limp along in bedraggled clothing, their feet blistered and flesh torn by cactuses and thorns, their soiled faces downcast in defeat and shame. These are the recent crossers who got caught by Border Patrol agents after hours or days in the desert.

Others, clean-cut in American clothes, were captured after years living illegally in the shadows. Many entered the United States as children, when U.S. businesses welcomed their laborer parents and the government looked the other way. They built careers and started families, raising kids who are U.S. citizens.

They dodged the law until politics changed and police cracked down. They were arrested and told they must leave voluntarily or be jailed with no hope of ever gaining legal status.

They are the collateral effect of America's stepped-up immigration enforcement, dividing families and leaving expelled migrants on a fence between Mexico and the United States - between past and future.

Nogales is not home, not even familiar to most. In the heat of summer, its streets overflow with aimless deportees. They sit in clusters, sharing cigarettes, black humor and despondence. They wait for money from family, for homeless shelters and soup kitchens to open, for bus rides south or another crossing north.

Ask which choice they'll make, they often choke up. "I don't know," they say, staring vacantly down the steamy streets. "What can I do?"

Law leads to layoff

Juan Jose Alonzo Oropeza, 33, made the trip north from Aguascalientes three years ago. He found construction work in Phoenix. His wife followed with an infant and a 5-year-old. She gave birth to a boy one year later.

Oropeza said he had no Social Security number, so his boss laid him off in fear of Arizona's workplace-enforcement law. He bought a phony number on the black market for $400 and found work as a dishwasher.

Police came and arrested him for identity theft. He was turned over to immigration agents, held in a detention center and given a choice: Fight the charges from behind bars or accept voluntary deportation.

"I had no money for a lawyer, and I knew I was going to lose," Oropeza said. "My family, what are they going to do if I'm in jail?"

He plans to go to Aguascalientes and apply for a green card. But he will wait in Nogales until his family joins him - until his wife has secured papers ensuring that their baby will be forever recognized as a U.S. citizen.

Oropeza weeps at the thought. "The one thing I am proud of is that my son was born in the United States," he says. "And one day, he can return and nobody can say anything. I am so sad, but this is my consolation."

Aid from government, Samaritans

Nogales' depression is palpable.

Maquila factories have laid off thousands of workers. American tourists, the lifeblood of a border town, no longer shop at souvenir stores or dine at the restaurants. They stopped coming because of the economy, the surge in drug violence and the new passport requirements.

Deported immigrants are a grim replacement. Impoverished already, about one-third of the illegal crossers get robbed by bandits before they are caught by the Border Patrol. Most end up in Nogales with nothing but the clothes on their backs and uncertainty in their eyes.

Greeted by officials from Mexico's federal migrant-assistance agency known as Grupos Beta, each is allowed a three-minute phone call to inform relatives where they are and to ask for help.

Occasionally, good Samaritans such as Pancho Olachea Martin show up with food, clothing or medical care. Olachea Martin, a 50-year-old Christian, tends to migrants' blisters and cuts. He said he spent 32 years in the United States, caring for the elderly, until he was deported. Now, he cleans buses for a living and buys first-aid supplies from his meager salary.

"When I see these feet," Martin said, applying antiseptic ointment to a man's toes, "I see the feet of Jesus Christ."

At sunset, many of the poorest migrants at Grupos Beta climbed into orange pickup trucks heading for a handful of shelters scattered around town. Others prepared to sleep on the streets, in fields or among tombstones in a nearby graveyard.

'I am a stranger in my own land'

Victoria Villagrana found temporary refuge in a hilltop tenement overlooking the border fence.

Jesuit priests provide the cramped apartment as part of an outreach program for homeless migrant women and children. Villagrana, 42, arrived with an infant daughter, a 12-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter.

The children are U.S. citizens, culturally and legally. Luis, a grim-faced middle-school student in Mexico for the first time, translates for his mom.

She was born in Nayarit but has lived in Los Angeles 21 years. She and the children were traveling in Arizona with her husband, a truck driver, when a conflict erupted. Villagrana and the children sought refuge at a domestic-violence shelter. Police came and discovered she was undocumented.

Villagrana breaks down.

"I am a stranger in my own land," she says. "I am so sad. When the bus came, it felt like I was leaving the country where I was born. I said, 'I don't want to go. This (United States) is my country.' "

Shelter for destitute migrants

Lighting flashes in the night sky over Nogales as a convoy of Grupos Beta trucks snakes through streets flowing with monsoon runoff, swerving uphill to an old house known as Albergue Juan Bosco.

Dozens of men and women, illegal immigrants deported from the United States, clamber from the truck beds and march like rain-soaked ghosts into the shelter for destitute migrants, joining others who arrived earlier.

Gilda Loureiro signs in newcomers at the front desk, then assembles them for a recitation of house rules: No smoking, drinking or weapons. Three nights is the limit, except for those who are sick.

The migrants, mostly young men, listen attentively and join in a prayer. They receive a bowl of spaghetti soup. Some take showers. Some, still in outfits shredded during the trek through Arizona's desert, receive donated clothes.

By midnight, nearly 200 people sleep on bunk beds and floors, snoring in the dim light while rain patters on the roof.

Gilda's husband, Francisco, says each night brings heartbreaking stories from men and women who risked everything for a dream and lost.

"There are so many emotions," he adds, "but we try to give them a little happiness. We want to help them with their problems."

No choice but to try crossing

Fernando Coria, 24, of Michoacan, says he migrated to the United States with his family when he was 6. He grew up as an American, becoming a painter. The former Phoenix resident now has a girlfriend and two children, all U.S. citizens, in Salt Lake City.

Coria says he was stopped for a traffic violation in March and put onto the bus to Nogales, where he has been stuck ever since. There are no relatives in Michoacan, a place he has not visited since childhood.

"It's so hard. Everyone in my family is in Utah," he adds. "My (girlfriend) says she won't come here. She's never been to Mexico but doesn't like it."

Coria tried to re-enter the United States but got caught. He bears no resentment, only a resigned sadness. "I understand the law, and I respect it. But I have no choice," he says. "I'll try one more time because America is my first country and Mexico is my second. I love the United States."

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