by JOSEPH NEVIN
The need to embrace and protect families is often invoked by leading members of the political class here in the United States. The U.S.-Mexico divide is a laboratory of sorts to see how this supposed love for the family plays out in practice.
An article in Monday’s New York Times reports that Mexican border towns are increasingly filled with deportees who are long-time U.S. residents with spouses and children in the United States. These familial ties compel the migrants to take ever-greater risks to rejoin their loved ones in el Norte. It also leads many of them to stay in Mexican border towns until they succeed, sometimes effectively trapping them there for years (see video below). Often, the deportees live in very difficult circumstances, and are under frequent threat from criminal gangs, as well as local police who see them as a potential cash source.
World: Trapped in Tijuana
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