Deportees Strain Mexican Border Towns

From NPR:

For many Mexican migrants who’ve just been deported from the United States, the border city Reynosa is where the American Dream dies.

Maria Nidelia Avila Basurto is a Catholic nun who heads a church-run shelter for deportees in Reynosa, in the northeast corner of Mexico, just across from McAllen, Texas.

“Many of them arrive with nothing,” she says. “We have to give them everything — clothes, shoes, everything.”

Last year, the U.S. deported a record number of immigrants. Almost 400,000 people who were in the country illegally were arrested and sent back to their home countries.

The vast majority were Mexicans, and many were released into dangerous cities like Reynosa. The city is struggling to deal with the thousands of deportees who arrive each month and are vulnerable to violent thugs, drug gangs and corrupt officials. . . .

The Mexican government does help deportees with one-way bus tickets to their home states, and the U.S. government has started flying more of them into Central Mexico, but still thousands end up being exiled each month into violent border cities such as Reynosa.

Migrant advocates here say that roughly 30 percent of the deportees immediately turn around and head north. They’d rather take their chances with the U.S. Border Patrol than venture out into an environment where they could get beaten, robbed, kidnapped or worse. Read more…

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