US deportees lost in limbo of Mexican border city

Under a gleaming midday sun, in the fetid drainage canal that is the Rio Tijuana, Valentin Gomez plunged a hypodermic needle of crystal meth just under a friend's collarbone. The man's eyes rolled back in ecstasy, or relief. Which one was hard to tell, as the drug did its work and he was in no condition to chat.

This is how Gomez passes his days along with many of the hundreds of others living in hovels, lean-tos and simply on the pavement in the canal – a catch basin for the drug addicted and the deported, sometimes both, just shy of the United States-Mexico border.

It is known as "El Bordo, " a Spanglish version of "border." For many living here, it may as well be limbo. "Home, no, there is nothing there for me," says Gomez, (27), who is from Puebla, near Mexico City, but lived half his life in California before he was caught and deported a year ago after the police caught him drinking in public. "Nothing for me here, either, but I do my drug and wait to see if I can get back to the other side."

Tijuana is promoting itself as a city on the rise, shaking off years of drug violence and declines in foreign tourism wrought by tightened checks at the border since the terrorist attacks of September 11th. It is possible to get artisanal beer on the tourist-tacky Avenida Revolución. Young tech entrepreneurs have taken over a fading old bus station as a hub for new businesses. A hot new restaurant opening here is as newsworthy as a sunrise. Much of this revival caters to the city’s young and affluent. But Tijuana has long been and remains a way station for the downtrodden heading for America or kicked out of it, and El Bordo represents the rougher edges yet to be smoothed down.

About 100 to 150 deportees are passed through a gate in the fence here every day, into a city hardly capable of absorbing them. The number has surged in recent years under get-tough policies first by former president George W Bush and more recently by President Barack Obama, who has deported more than two million people since he took office, even more than his predecessor. Roughly a third have been sent to Tijuana.

Obama’s new plan on immigration calls for more security on the border and a heightened focus on deporting criminals, possibly resulting in more people here. Most move on, but the most desperate – drug addicted, alcoholic, mentally ill, criminal – end up in El Bordo sooner or later.

Its ranks have grown in recent years. A study late last year by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a research centre here, estimated El Bordo's population to be 700 to 1,200 people, about 90 percent of whom said in a survey that they had been deported from the United States, mostly within the previous four years. About 70 percent said they consumed illicit drugs.

With hopes to once again draw tourists across the border, the new mayor of Tijuana, Jorge Astiazarán Orcí, has promised to clean up El Bordo and remove its denizens. He has been vague about where they might go, promising to release more details in the coming weeks as he works out a plan with the state and federal governments.

“They have to be removed,” the mayor said in an interview, citing the danger of the coming rainy season that could send flash floods through the canal. Migrant shelters and drug rehabilitation centers are overcrowded, and many deportees stay in Tijuana for months, if not years, in the hope that they will find a way to cross again, despite the San Diego area now having as many as three sets of fences.

They panhandle, wash windshields and sometimes steal to get by, buying hits of methamphetamine and heroin that go for 50 pesos a dose, just under €3. The police often pass through setting fire to their belongings, asking for bribes and carrying them off to jail for not having proper identification, several El Bordo residents said. A police spokesman denied that officers had conducted such raids but acknowledged that arrests are often made in and near El Bordo for robbery, drugs and other offenses.

“When they enter the city, that’s the problem,” says Victor Clark-Alfaro, director the Binational Center for Human Rights, an advocacy group for migrants, and a longtime researcher of the San Diego-Tijuana border. “They are like undocumented migrants in their own country. They often don’t have Mexican identity documents. The police harass and abuse them. There is no drug treatment for them or job assistance. They have no future here.”

Miguel Marshall, (28), a venture capitalist, says he is working on a plan that would turn the canal’s banks into gardens and park land, and plant bamboo in the waterway to help reduce pollution. The plan has plenty of details but no financing, though he hopes to get city leaders and foundations on board.

“We see Tijuana as the gateway to Latin America,” he says. From the canal, such a transformation is difficult to envision, as flies and roaches swarm over the detritus fashioned into places to sleep. Mario Santos, (39), walking the banks on a recent afternoon, says he was deported five months ago after a traffic stop in Gilroy, California, revealed that he was in the United States illegally. He had lived there for 20 years, he says, and had no desire to return to his native Oaxaca because he no longer feels any ties to it.

“I am trying to get some money to go somewhere else,” he says. “There are too many fights and drugs here.” Juan Rudio Ramirez, 42, taking some swigs of Tonayan, a cheap sugar cane liquor, says it will be difficult to keep him and others out of the canal. Shelters, he notes, charge up to $2 (€1.60) a night, and people often do not stay in rehabilitation centres long enough to get the treatment they need.

“We all left the shelters,” he says. He was deported several years ago and struggles with heroin addiction. Home is Chihuahua, Mexico, he says; at least, that is where he was born. “Home is here,” he points out. “The only thing that gets us out is water. When it rains we grab what we can and run. And then,” he adds, chuckling, “here we are again.”

New York Times