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BajaNews
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In Tijuana, deported migrants struggle to survive
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gJRtmZNTV5...
By OMAR MILLAN
August 5, 2011
TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — After 15 years of installing marble in homes in Escondido, California, Porfirio Perez was caught without a driver's license
during a February traffic stop and deported.
Now the 42-year-old just tries to survive in this sprawling industrial border city, 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) from his birthplace of Puebla in
central Mexico.
He is among hundreds of deportees who are stuck in Tijuana, which sits across from San Diego, California. Some don't have the money for a bus trip
home. Some are waiting to cross the border again. And some have mental problems or addictions.
Like many of the other 350 people living in and around a section of the Rio Tijuana canal that separates the two cities, Perez doesn't have the
Mexican documents he would need to get a job, or the permanent addresses to get the documents.
"I'm looking for work here but I can't get any because I don't have papers or a voter ID," Perez said. "It's a real awful change, you know. There,
when I was hungry I'd go to a restaurant. Here, you eat if you can get it. You walk back and forth, looking out for the police."
During the day the deportees look for work, wash cars at intersections or flee Mexican police who consider them a nuisance. At night they take refuge
in drainage tunnels feeding the canal, beneath bridges or in shacks made of wood, cloth and plastic a few feet from the rusty barrier that separates
the country of their birth from the country where they worked years for a better life.
The Padre Chava soup kitchen in Tijuana has offered 900 free breakfasts a day for the last 12 years, along with haircuts and medical services. About
80 percent of the people it serves have been repatriated from the United States.
"Society has to turn to the reality that deportees and migrants are a part of our city," said the Rev. Ernesto Hernandez Ruiz, kitchen director. "We
can't consider them a plague ... they're human beings in a difficult situation who need a hand."
An average of 254 migrants were deported to Tijuana every day from the United States in the first half of this year, according to Mexico's National
Migration Institute. That's down from 2010, when an average of 366 people were deported every day over the same period.
During the 2 1/2 years of President Barack Obama's administration, the U.S. has deported a million people, almost all them Mexican, according to U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Most repatriated Mexicans find a way to return to their homes. But others like Perez wind up staying, disoriented, without money or contacts. Many
left Mexico as children or adolescents and don't have social security numbers or a voter registration card, the document Mexicans use as their general
identification, much like driver's licenses in the U.S.
Getting copies of their birth certificates can be complicated and expensive.
Some are drug addicts who rob their fellow camp members.
Arturo Macias, 41, says he has lived in the river bed with about 50 people the last 2 1/2 years. The camp has the stench of decaying food that no one
seems to notice and is littered with used syringes.
"Here on the border we hustle every day to see who can give us something to eat and (money) for drugs. Why am I going to lie?" said Macias, who is
addicted to heroin. "I'm tired of this life, but the main thing is to get up in the morning with the gang and see how you are going to get something
to buy food or drugs."
An accord signed by U.S. and Mexican authorities covering deportations from the San Diego area in 2008 guarantees a "safe, dignified and orderly"
arrangement for deportees that safeguards human rights. It pledges not to separate families, to ensure deportations occur between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.
for children, women and the elderly. Convicted criminals from three border-area California prisons should be sent back only on weekdays, when
government offices are open and authorities can be notified.
But Vicki Gaubeca, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Regional Center for Border Rights, said the agreement is often violated and it
provides no protection to keep a deportee from being left alone in an unfamiliar region without papers, money, friends or relatives.
"We are aware, for example, of repatriations of women at midnight (along the border) ... There is also a committee that is supposed to meet to oversee
these agreements, but to date we do not know a single member," she said.
ICE in San Diego follows that agreement, said Robert Culley, director of deportations and removals in San Diego.
But other offices in Los Angeles, Seattle or San Francisco could be deporting outside those hours, Culley said. Each region has its own arrangement.
Mexico's National Institute of Migration has run a program for three years whose objective is to pay the full costs for repatriated migrants to return
to their hometowns and work with their home state to find them employment.
But that program is not adequately funded and requires a birth certificate or ID card to participate, said the labor department representative in Baja
California, Monica Garcia. Most deportees arrive with only a deportation notice.
Just 397 migrants participated in the program in the first half of 2011.
Agustin Banos lives with his wife in a shack by the canal, far closer to the Los Angeles textile factory where he worked as a tailor for two years
than to his hometown of Acapulco, the Pacific resort whose poor neighborhoods are often bloodied by drug violence.
The couple takes turns looking out for police in the afternoons and night. In the mornings he heads to a local market to clean vegetables and wash
cars, but it's not enough to afford the seven pesos (59 U.S. cents) to use a pay toilet down the street.
"We're going to try to cross again, maybe tomorrow or the day after," he said. "We're going alone, that's our only choice. Sometimes one wants to
finish what he's started."
--
Photo: In this photo taken June 22, 2011, one man injects a saline solution into another man who is believed to have overdosed on heroin, in hopes of
reviving him, in Tijuana, Mexico. The two men live in the Tijuana River canals where many of the people deported from the U.S. end up taking refuge.
With no where else to go, the deportees live among drug addicts or people with mental health problems. Emergency medical services came for the man who
is believed to have overdosed, but it is unclear if he survived. (by Alejandro Cossio)
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MrBillM
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All Choked Up.
The story is so touching, it brings tears to my eyes and an ache to my heart.
I'm overwhelmed by a sense of universal brotherhood and a desire for charity, fellowship and understanding.
Overcome by the enormity of the human tragedy, I find myself consumed in reflecting on the scope of the injustice.
We can only hope that stories like this will bring us all together with a new sense of purpose.
There's just nothing left to say.
Let us pray there will be hope for all.
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C-Urchin
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Immigrants
Shame. Shame and more shame. We use and abuse these people.
*Be the man your dog thinks you are
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DENNIS
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Somebody has hijacked MrBill's account here. 
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woody with a view
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do you really have to show that foto? that is farking disgusting. saline solution to reverse an overdose? i'm gonna puke now.
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BAJACAT
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| Quote: | Originally posted by woody with a view
do you really have to show that foto? that is farking disgusting. saline solution to reverse an overdose? i'm gonna puke now. |
Woody not all Baja is pretty fill with scenery..this is reality, this people are the ones asking for money in the Border crossing.We
can just take the good and ignore the bad the problem is there, and it all comes in one package.. and really the photo is mearly a small example of
what happens in Tijuana..
The Bordo is consider no man's land, anything goes there...When we throught there towards any Baja destination we just look the other way in pretend
not nothing is going one...
BAJA IS WHAT YOU WANTED TO BE, FUN,DANGEROUS,INCREDIBLE, REMOTE, EXOTIC..JUST GO AND HAVE FUN.....
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BajaBlanca
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I did not know of this problem ... seems like mexico needs to beef up the process for getting documents to citizens .....in TJ and not making them
suffer so.
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MrBillM
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Oh, The Humanity !
But, not our fault.
Unfortunately, it is ANOTHER of the MANY examples of the Failures of the Mexican Government.
An excellent juxtaposition of stories would be this one and that of Carlos Slim's expanding empire.
The U.S. is a shining example of Economic Equality when compared to the Financial Oligarchy existing in Mexico and elsewhere.
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toneart
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This is the quote from the article that we might all keep in our hearts:
"Society has to turn to the reality that deportees and migrants are a part of our city," said the Rev. Ernesto Hernandez Ruiz, kitchen director. "We
can't consider them a plague ... they're human beings in a difficult situation who need a hand."
Call me a "bleeding heart". Go ahead. I am! 
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woody with a view
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i know Bajacat, i've driven along the border fence northbound while 5 guys stood around a dude with a needle in his arm looking for a vein. all i
meant to say is that is pretty severe stuff for an open forum like this. i mean, i've had less graphic language censored.
on top of that, why are they shooting saline into the guy's windpipe and not a big artery 2 inches over?
[Edited on 8-6-2011 by woody with a view]
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The Gull
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Grover - not a good posting. Shame on you.
�I won\'t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.� William F. Buckley, Jr.
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burnrope
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Cry me a Tijuana River.
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bryanmckenzie
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Illegal Aliens vs. Prisons-for-Profit
There is MUCH more to this story.
You have seen just the end of the story. Between the arrest and the deportation comes a horrific story of what we are doing in this supposed "great"
country of ours when we criminalize desperate people's attempts to get ahead and feed themselves and left with few alternatives other than illegally
crossing our border --- NOTE: I'd do it, too, if I were destitute in Central America.
Do NOT for a minute think that we catch someone, put them on a bus and drop them off in Tijuana!
This is all about PROFIT-MOTIVATED action. Do not be fooled by the "high & noble" cause of "sealing our borders." That's a bunch of hype. If
private corporate profit were not driving this effort, do you honestly believe we'd commit so many federal resources ($10's billions) to "protecting"
the USA from hungry workers that pick YOUR vegetables?!?!
Think about it ... simple illegals vs. drug runners & narco-traffic. Your tax dollars are flowing to the "easy" targets so the government/media
can claim progress, while the difficult work of actually stemming the flow of illegal drugs into this country yields only occasional results.
The essay below is fairly lengthy AND is one of the best written exposés of how YOUR tax dollars are going into privately-run prison companies to
incarcerate illegal immigrants before they are ever deported. You pay (handsomely). Lives/families are ruined with felonies rather than simple illegal
entry.
This is nothing less than BOUNTY-HUNTING. It's obscene! Find the illegal, send 'em to prison, make a buck for your company:
"While the nation’s nonimmigrant prison population has recently leveled off, the number of immigrants detained daily
by ICE (formerly INS) has increased fivefold since the mid-1990s, and the annual number of detainees continues year after year to reach record highs.
Assuming current trends hold, ICE will have detained more than 400,000 immigrants in 2009.
The federal government’s escalating demand for immigrant prison beds saved CCA and other private corporations that had overbuilt
speculative prisons. Over the past eight years, the prison giants CCA ($1.6 billion in annual revenue) and GEO Group ($1.1 billion)
have racked up record profits, with jumps in revenue and profits roughly paralleling the rising numbers of detained immigrants."
I encourage my fellow Baja Nomads to educate themselves on the LUNACY of how each and every one of us pays for this intermediate step prior to
deportation, that makes private companies rich from people (most) who pose no threat to society in the name of "teaching a lesson" to the illegal
border crosser. This is an EXCEPTIONAL essay!
What was that line at the bottom of the statue of liberty????
IMMIGRATION (for profit !!!) PRISONS ...
http://www.utne.com/Politics/Private-Prisons-Riot-Jailing-Am...
[Edited on 2011-8-6 by bryanmckenzie]
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burnrope
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Generations of Americans have died to make our country what it is. I have no sympathy for some one who comes here illegally. They cost the border
states millions if not billions of dollars that could be better spent on it's citizens. I'm all for legal immigration, but no jumping the the line.
Maybe they should go fight and die to make their home country a better place for their children, instead of reducing the USA into a 3rd world entity.
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woody with a view
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whatever "that" line said, i'm sure there was a line to stand in before you could even see it. if you could read it or not.
you bring up a good point on the monetization of the immigration laws. even in the construction industry the govt wants private corps to take on
privatization of the military housing industry. we bid on renovating, maintaining, and after 50 years the govt wants us to renovate, again. then put
the complex up for bid for the next cycle.....
times they are a changing...... pretty soom nobody is going to want to come to america if the politicians are allowed to raise a debt limit and cut
spending in equal increments, with the end result being no actual savings or cuts being implemented.....
the u.s. is becoming a village society. bring in the uneducated, unskilled and they will revert to what they know-from where they come from. a bunch
of villages springing up in a modern society.
education is the key. with 30% of high school kids in LA dropping out before graduating high school, i think the future is setting up fast and hard,
like concrete.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/scho-a03.shtml
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/17/local/me-dropout17
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MitchMan
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| Quote: | Originally posted by MrBillM
The U.S. is a shining example of Economic Equality when compared to the Financial Oligarchy existing in Mexico and elsewhere. |
Not exactly, we, the USA, is the second worst country in the world with regard to disparity of income and wealth. See "GINI Coefficient". Mexico
used to be #2, but we surpassed them in recent years, even with all their corruption. One interpretation of this is that the USA's legal economic
system favoring the people at the top is worse than Mexico's and is a "tarnished" example of economic disparity.
| Quote: | Originally posted by MrBillM
Unfortunately, it is ANOTHER of the MANY examples of the Failures of the Mexican Government. |
If the God awful lack of Mexican Economic Equality is a failure, what does that say about the USA's worse lack of Economic Equality given that the USA
is second worst offender in the world and Mexico is not as bad as us at 3rd place in the world?
[Edited on 8-6-2011 by MitchMan]
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SFandH
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| Quote: | Originally posted by burnrope
I have no sympathy for some one who comes here illegally. They cost the border states millions if not billions of dollars that could be better spent
on it's citizens. |
From the first sentence of the original article:
"After 15 years of installing marble in homes in Escondido, California......."
Seems that this guy didn't cost the US anything. He worked, probably for a company that withheld income, social security, and other taxes seeing that
he did a skilled job in people's homes for 15 years. They wouldn't come here if people didn't hire them.
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burnrope
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1 out of 12,000,000. Big Deal.
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DENNIS
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| Quote: | Originally posted by SFandH
They wouldn't come here if people didn't hire them. |
Drugs wouldn't come here if people didn't buy them either. Does that make it OK ??
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MrBillM
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OH ! The Horror of it ALL Living in the USA
As a member of the oppressed Middle-Class here in this God-Forsaken Gringo land of Greed, I am filled with the frustration of knowing how much better
off I'd be somewhere else where my pitiful existence would not be so overflowing with Pain and Deprivation.
If I were not so "Aged", I know that I would migrate to some distant Working Man's Paradise where I could better realize the value of my efforts
unhindered by the mendacious manipulations of the Elite Ruling Class of Plundering Bankers and Greedy Goons.
Just today, paying my Dish Network bill of $127.22, I was reminded of the constant economic Blood-Letting inflicted upon those of us rotting at the
bottom of the Economic ladder.
I now understand why so many Nortenos along the border are climbing the fences to head South.
Along with those on the Gulf who build rickety boats to risk Life and Limb paddling to the Caribbean peoples' paradise of Cuba.
IF only I'd known when I was younger that I was living under a nightmare of servile stupor.
Stupid ME. I thought I had it pretty good.
But, now (that it's too late) I KNOW.
Though I still don't know all that Gnu knows.
So, it seems like those languishing in TJ are better off for not being here, aren't they ?
Seriously, Though, On the Bright side (Glass Half-full, as they say), those guys who spent years in El Norte made more than they
would have back home, so they should count their Blessings, Don't Worry, Be Happy and Look to the Sunny Side of Life.
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