Accompanying Deportees in Mexico

Social media is filled with news about immigrants who have been deported from the US. Have you ever wondered about what happens to those who have been deported? Where are they sent? What kind of life will they live apart from their family members
who remain in the US?

For the past six weeks, Sister Rose and I have been accompanying the Jesuits to a center for deportees in Matamoros, Mexico. Deportees who are Mexican arrive daily and spend 2-3 days in a center (large tent) set up by the Mexican government and run by the military. There are usually about 150 men and 10 women when we visit on Mondays.

Their stories are heart-breaking. Many of them lived in the US for 10, 20 and even 30 years or more. Some were detained in centers in the US for many months before they were finally deported to Mexico. All of them speak about the children, spouses
and friends that they left behind. Watching men and women weep openly on their knees during Mass makes me question the humanity of a process that separates families and stifles the dreams of fathers and mothers who migrated to the US for the well-being of their children.

Before we went to the center, I wondered how we would be received. As US citizens, would we be seen as complicit with the government who deported them? I was shocked by how these men and women welcomed us into their midst. They were grateful for our presence. We were not strangers to them but rather fellow Americans—their neighbors from a country that they and their families had considered home for many years.

Almost all of the deportees arrive with only the clothes that they were wearing when picked up by ICE or that they were given in the detention center. The women, in particular, are desperate for a change of clothes that they can wear when they leave the center. Recently, one of the women that we met was kidnapped as she journeyed through Mexico. It is a fact that migrants dressed in gray sweat suits, commonly worn in US detention centers, are easy targets for kidnappers and assailants.

Our OSP-IHM Border Community decided to use money donated by IHM sisters, associates and friends to help, in a small way, restore the dignity of our migrant brothers and sisters. Sister Carmen, who cannot cross into Mexico, because she does not want to compromise her own legal status in the US, shops for women’s underwear, sanitary supplies, and t-shirts as well as toiletries for both men and women. At home she prepares the bags that Sister Rose and I then deliver to the men and women in the deportee center. It is a community project that we are only able to do because of your prayerful support and monetary donations!