U.S.-Mexico Border

I was not prepared when I opened Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives. One moment I was sitting at my desk, and the next I was with Roberto, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. I followed him as he moved from one underpaying, exhausting job to the next; working even harder once he had his own family. I was by his side when he received amnesty, but his family didn’t. They voluntarily left the country while he stayed behind to continue working to support them. Here Roberto recounts his own experiences, providing me a glimpse into his struggles and feelings of profound loneliness and loss.

After ten years of making a life for himself in the beach-front city of Santa Monica, California, Jorge Romero* was deported to Mexico, joining the ranks of nearly 400,000 other undocumented migrants removed from the United States this past fiscal year. Behind the record high number of deportations by the Obama Administration are stark, human stories of broken families and untold abuse suffered by those who attempt to return to their homes in the United States. Jorge, who left behind his cousin and father in Santa Monica, was one of those to brave the dangerous journey back. On the way, he was apprehended and grossly abused by the U.S. Border Patrol. This is his story, as recorded by humanitarian organization No More Deaths:

On the heels of an especially violent summer south of the border, well-known Mexican movie star Diego Luna came to Washington, D.C. in September, not as an actor, but as an advocate for the growing international campaign Stop Gun Smuggling: 3 Things President Obama CAN Do. Luna met with policymakers to promote measures that could curb the flow of assault weapons from the United States into Mexico, saving thousands of Mexican lives, while making U.S. communities safer. Some estimates suggest that as many as 2,000 guns are smuggled across the U.S. border into Mexico every day, and in Diego’s own words:

Below is a very important report by No More Deaths describing serious problems concerning short-term custody practices by the U.S. Border Patrol. The findings of this report are twofold: First, human rights abuses of individuals in short-term U.S. Border Patrol custody are systematic and widespread. The abuses documented over the past two and a half years do not reflect anomalous incidents but rather an institutional culture of abuse within Border Patrol. Second, the custody standards that do exist are inadequate and are not subject to the oversight necessary to ensure their implementation. Without drastic changes to Border Patrol custody standards and independent accountability mechanisms, the senseless abuse of immigrants along the border and in Border Patrol custody is certain to continue. Please find a brief summary of the report’s methodology, findings, and recommendations below.