Luis Valentan spent more than three decades in the United States. He arrived as a young man from México in the 1990s and worked in construction and landscaping as a day laborer for years before becoming a host for Radio Jornalera, a show on the National Day Laborer Organizing Network that advocates for the rights of immigrants and the working class. He built a life with his family and worked as a labor and community organizer in California, Arizona, and Utah.
Then came the second Trump administration.
As an activist who lacked permanent legal status, Valentan told The Barbed Wire he endured mounting intimidation and feared retaliation after he spoke out about how day laborers should defend themselves from police harassment. A sheriff from Utah threatened him, police stopped both him and his wife, and unmarked vehicles began circling their home, he said.
By August, he felt he had no choice but to leave.
The Valentans sold off everything they owned, said goodbye to their friends, and began the long drive south from Los Angeles to the Mexican border.
“Lo que realmente sentía era ese cansancio de luchar contracorriente. Yo quería vivir tranquilo y sin esos temores, ya no estaba dispuesto a darle a este país lo que me queda de vida y de energía,” Valentan told The Barbed Wire. “What I truly felt was exhaustion from fighting against the current. I wanted to live in peace and without fear; I was no longer willing to give this country what’s left of my life and my energy.”
When they crossed into Tijuana, Valentan remembers feeling emotional but relieved as he looked up and saw an enormous Mexican flag. He was hopeful about what he’d heard about support being offered through the Mexican government’s new strategy for deportees, “México te abraza” (Mexico embraces you).
Since the Mexican Repatriation during the Great Depression in the 1930s, large-scale deportations from the United States have challenged the Mexican government’s capacity and political will to help people like the Valentans start over. For nearly a century, each Mexican president has laid out a strategy promising a dignified reception and opportunities for those coming back. Recently it was “Somos Mexicanos” under Enrique Peña Nieto and the “Estrategia de Protección al Migrante” under Andrés Manuel López Obrador. President Claudia Sheinbaum’s “México te abraza” is the latest in a long list of attempts to fulfill that promise.
The strategy was announced on Jan. 20, coinciding with Trump’s second inauguration. It was a direct response to Trump’s threats to carry out massive deportations “very quickly” after taking office. At risk are more than 14 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S., including an estimated 4.3 million Mexicans, according to an August report from Pew Research. Texas has the second largest unauthorized population in the U.S., with 2.1 million undocumented people living in the state. They work in nearly every sector of the economy, including farming, construction, and hospitality.
The Sheinbaum government assured Mexicans in the U.S. that “no están solos” (“they are not alone”) and that their country was ready to welcome them home “con los brazos abiertos” (“with open arms”). They explained that federal agencies would work together to issue deportees identity documents and ensure they have access to social security and jobs. Returnees would also receive a “Tarjeta Paisano,” a prepaid card worth 2,000 pesos (about $108 USD) to cover immediate expenses.
In interviews with immigration lawyers, watchdogs, and deportees, The Barbed Wire found that hardships for detained migrants do not end after deportation — and word has spread among migrant communities in the U.S. of the dangers they can expect when they arrive in Mexico, including targeting by cartels.
After returning to Mexico, the Valentan family headed to Flamingos, an event hall on Tijuana’s south side, which has been adapted into a reception center and temporary shelter as part of the “México te abraza” strategy. Those who leave the U.S. are offered a meal and a bed for the night at Flamingos and can receive help obtaining identification documents, orientation about social programs, transportation to their home states, and limited financial aid.
Valentan appreciated the effort but soon noticed gaps in the assistance: His family didn’t qualify for certain government programs, and no one followed up after that initial contact at Flamingos. Though he knows he has advantages over many others — he is fluent in English and Spanish, has digital skills, and has relatives he can lean on — rebuilding has been harder than he expected.
“Es difícil. He conocido gente que lleva tiempo acá y está tratando de adaptarse porque uno no se halla,” he reflects. “It’s difficult. I’ve met people who have been here for some time and are trying to adjust, because you feel like you don’t belong.”
The Valentans’ experience highlights contradictions at the heart of “México te abraza.” The strategy appears ambitious on paper and has earned wide praise for its humanitarian approach, but advocates and experts say it’s undermined by a flawed design, a lack of coordination, and no follow-up, which means that, for many deportees, the assistance provided is little more than a stopgap.
Valentan says they were offered only one Paisano card — “según era una tarjeta por familia” (“they said it was only one per family”) — and only received an additional one for their adult son after they pressed the authorities at the reception center in Tijuana. Their daughters, who are minors, did not receive cards. The family was issued CURPs (Mexico’s Population Registration Code) and birth certificates but was not registered for social security.
The Mexican government claims the strategy has been working according to plan. In September, Secretary of the Interior Rosa Icela Rodríguez informed the Mexican Congress that more than 591,000 “services,” including food, shelter, medical care, and Paisano cards, had been delivered through the strategy’s nine reception centers. Videos produced by the Mexican government show deportees arriving in the country and being greeted by personnel and mariachis.
Rossy Antúnez, an advocate with the Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración (IMUMI), a Mexican civil society organization that defends the rights of migrant women, gives the Sheinbaum government credit for a few noticeable improvements compared to previous administrations.
“Sabemos que ahora les dan alimentos calientes, anteriormente era puro sándwich, y les dan la tarjeta Paisano de dos mil pesos,” Antúnez told The Barbed Wire. “We know that they now give them hot meals, previously it was just sandwiches, and they give them the Paisano card with two thousand pesos.” Still, she insists, problems remain: “México te abraza” has no dedicated budget and draws from whatever the federal government agencies involved can spare; there is little room for long-term planning, said Antúnez, who has been monitoring the strategy since it was launched.
“Todavía se está tratando a esto como una emergencia, pero se necesita que sea una política pública,” she said. “They are still treating this as an emergency, but it needs to be public policy.”
Immigration expert Eunice Rendón, who coordinates Agenda Migrante, a coalition of pro-migrant organizations, agreed. She told The Barbed Wire she views the strategy as an opportunity to do right by deportees but also believes that significant changes are needed.
“Esto no debería ser un programa de recepción; tiene que ser un programa de reintegración porque no es lo mismo recibir a la gente y darle agua, un abracito y unos pesos que reintegrar a las personas en su sociedad,” Rendón said. “This should not be a reception program; it has to be a reintegration program because it’s not the same to receive people and give them water, a little hug, and a few pesos as it is to reintegrate them into their society.”
Since the strategy’s launch in January, Rendón has been working to connect deportees to job opportunities. Rendón has witnessed firsthand what deportees experience at the reception centers and says processes need to be simplified and personnel need to be trained to assist deportees, many of whom have been subjected to mistreatment, with appropriate sensitivity.
Since Trump returned to power, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detentions have surged in the U.S. An analysis of ICE enforcement data by The Texas Tribune shows that daily detentions in Texas have doubled from 85 under Biden to 176 under Trump when comparing the last 18 months of the Biden administration to the first 6 months of the Trump administration and that from Trump’s inauguration to the end of July, the state accounted for 24% of all arrests made by ICE nationwide. Additionally, September data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University research center, shows that Texas is the state with the highest number of detainees at ICE facilities, with over 17,500 out of 65,135 held nationwide.
Trump said he would be targeting “the worst of the worst,” but, according to the same ICE enforcement data analyzed by The Texas Tribune, less than half of those arrested have criminal convictions. People are being taken during asylum case check-ins, while dropping their kids at school, and at construction sites and restaurants.
“Everyone is being treated like a criminal and there is really no differentiation of who came here two years ago or who’s been here for 20 years,” said Amanda Aguilar, an immigration lawyer at the San Antonio office of American Gateways, a Texas nonprofit that provides free and low-cost immigration legal services.
She’s noticed a shift in terms of who is being targeted, including immigrants with established jobs, families, and years of paying taxes.
“I’m representing Mexican nationals who have been here forever, entered lawfully, have car insurance, their own homes,” Aguilar said. “To me it just feels so un-American to try to remove them from America because they’ve just been contributing to this community for so long. And I think it’s so important to know that this administration does not care about that. And their goal is to swiftly remove as many people as they possibly can.”
Conditions at detention centers have come under scrutiny, with a recent Senate investigation reporting them as shocking and uncovering allegations of sexual and physical abuse, mistreatment of women and children, overcrowding, and medical neglect.
In Texas, advocates have been sounding the alarm over poor conditions at the facilities, with detainees, including children, lacking access to clean water and essential medical care, according to testimonies documented by the Associated Press in June. There are also concerns that Camp East Montana in El Paso, the largest ICE detention center in the country, fails to meet minimal standards; a report by The Barbed Wire notes that local officials have warned about detainees not having access to air conditioning, running water, showers, and hot meals.
Mexican authorities estimate that between January and October more than 116,000 Mexicans have been deported from the U.S.
The state of Tamaulipas, which borders South Texas, ranks first in Mexico in the number of returnees, with crossings concentrating in the Laredo-Nuevo Laredo, Brownsville-Matamoros, and Hidalgo-Reynosa land ports. According to the Instituto Tamaulipeco para los Migrantes, a Tamaulipas state agency that assists migrants, over 30,000 Mexican nationals have been repatriated via the Texas border with Tamaulipas between January and September.
But hardship does not end after deportation. Word has spread among migrant communities in the U.S. of the dangers they can expect when they arrive in Mexico, and in border states like Tamaulipas in particular.
Nearly a Million Texas Students Have an Undocumented Parent. Who Will Protect Them When ICE Comes?
“My clients will say, ‘Can you please ask them not to drop me off in Tamaulipas?” Aguilar said. “And I do ask, but ICE just doesn’t care.”
Aguilar says that cartels held one of her recent clients for ransom immediately after his deportation to Mexico via the Tamaulipas border. She only found out, she says, because her client’s wife, who is still in Texas, reached out to her.
Rossy Antúnez from the Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración (IMUMI) told The Barbed Wire that transportation from the border to deportees’ home states is often perilous, that bus stations there are particularly dangerous, and that criminals in Mexico know how to spot deportees.
“Saben cómo se ve una persona deportada que viene con su bolsa o morral y conocen la vestimenta de los centros de detención,” Antúnez explained. “They know what a deported person looks like with their bag or backpack, and they know what the clothing from the detention centers is.”
Antúnez described a case her organization handled that illustrates the gaps in care for returnees: A Tojolabal woman of Mayan descent from Chiapas was deported to Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso. There were no interpreters at the reception center there and the woman was referred to IMUMI because she needed to locate her husband, who had been detained with her in the U.S.
The woman told case workers at IMUMI that she had been bleeding and was placed on a bus for a long journey to Chiapas without receiving medical attention.
“Es un trayecto como de 40 horas desde (Ciudad) Juárez a Chiapas, y estás enviando a una persona que posiblemente tiene un aborto activo. Eso no lo detectaron y tampoco contactaron al INM (Instituto Nacional de Migración), que es el que recopila toda la información de las personas deportadas para encontrar al esposo. No hay coordinación entre las propias instituciones que están en los albergues,” Antúnez said. “It’s a journey of about 40 hours from (Ciudad) Juárez to Chiapas, and you’re sending someone who may be having an active miscarriage. “They didn’t detect that, and they also didn’t contact the INM (National Institute of Migration), which is the one that collects all the information on deported people to find the husband. There is no coordination between the institutions in the shelters.”
Jobs for deportees are a key pillar of “México te abraza.” The message is clear: People left Mexico for the U.S. because there were no decent jobs, but now they can get them after being forced to return. In June, “México te abraza”’s business allies announced that 70,000 job openings had been made available for returnees, with some jobs paying up to 40,000 pesos per month (about $2,170).
However, those working directly with migrants and returnees have identified roadblocks.
“La oferta y la demanda no se conectan en automático; tienen que hacer un trabajo más territorial y más cercano,” Rendón said. “Supply and demand don’t connect automatically; they need to do more on-the-ground and locally focused work.”
Rendón has been working to bridge deportees and job opportunities and recognizes the government and businesses want to help, but the process of trying to connect returnees with employers is rushed. According to Rendón, returnees at the reception centers are asked about their job interests as soon as they arrive, but the jobs posted to the dedicated website often don’t match returnee skills or are far from their home states or where their families live.
Only 4% of deportees have actually secured employment through the strategy and the government has yet to disclose what salaries the jobs that returnees get are paying, according to a recent Bloomberg investigation.
Two months after leaving their life in the U.S., he and his family are still struggling to settle in. Because Valentan was not officially deported, those in his family’s situation might not qualify for programs like unemployment benefits from local governments. Some programs, he has found out, require both the carta de repatriación (repatriation letter) and the carta de vinculación (affiliation letter) that Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Migración (National Migration Institute) gives to deportees; however, those documents are not always issued to those who self-deport. Valentan believes returnees like him and his family should be included.
“Son retornos forzados y eso le debe quedar claro al gobierno mexicano,” Valentan contends. “These are forced returns and the Mexican government needs to see that.”
“Es una deportación porque tienen miedo con todo lo que está sucediendo allá, no tienen cómo ir a trabajar o cómo pagar la renta,” Valentan said. “It’s a deportation because they are scared with everything that is happening over there; they can’t work or pay the rent.”
Valentan has been talking to other returnees and says that many are not getting the assistance they need. He says the Mexican government doesn’t seem to grasp the severity of the abuse endured by those who were detained in the U.S.
“Me dicen ‘es que nos trataron mal y lo que me cuentan son violaciones de derechos humanos.’ Desde ahí el gobierno mexicano tiene que ver por los derechos de nuestra gente,” Valentan said of people like him who’ve shared similar paths. “They tell me that we were mistreated and what they’re telling me are human rights violations. The Mexican government has a responsibility to protect the rights of our people.”
Today, Valentan continues his work as an activist and shares information on social media that he believes could empower people who are being targeted in the U.S. He told The Barbed Wire he is currently helping a returnee who had been working with Radio Jornalera in Houston.
“El era un trabajador de la construcción allá, lo estamos ayudando a conseguir sus papeles y servicios sociales,” Valentan explained. “He was a construction worker over there; we are helping him get his (Mexican) papers and social services.”