Deported Without Her Children - Alicia’s Story
2013 Human Rights Watch
As told by Grace Meng, immigrants’ rights researcher for the US program
The women had just finished breakfast at the Tijuana shelter when I arrived. Like many people in Mexican towns on the US border, they had been deported from the United States for not having proper documentation. When I asked them if they had kids living in the United States, most raised their hands and started crying. All these mothers, missing their children. I passed around tissues. These days, I always carry tissues with me.
Under US law, people who have been deported, regardless of their family ties, have no legal way to return to the United States. Additionally, as my report, Turning Migrants into Criminals, shows, when people desperate to see their families cross back into the United States illegally, they are prosecuted in US criminal court and often imprisoned at taxpayer expense.
I met Alicia, a weary-looking woman in her 30s, at the Tijuana shelter. She last saw her daughters two-and-a-half years ago when the police handcuffed her and lead her away, while her daughters watched from the backseat of the family car, clutching each other and crying.
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