Deported to Tijuana

"I don’t like the way I’m living right now, but these are the consequences, and now I’m trying to better my life."

By Jorge Nunez

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23 year-old Jorge Nunez was born in Tijuana, Mexico, but has spent his entire life in Los Angeles. Like thousands of young people who were born in other countries and have grown up here without becoming U.S. citizens, Jorge got caught up in the criminal justice system. His best choice for getting out of it was to cop a plea and agree to be deported back home- without a hearing. His story begins on his last day in California.

On the day I was supposed to get out of prison, the INS picked me up. They dressed me up in my parole clothes as if I were going home. They took the chains off, and then I had to sign these papers waiving my right to remain in the U.S. They drove the bus right to the border, and opened the gate. I was free. But I was in Mexico.

Being out in Tijuana, I didn’t know my way around. When we got out, like from the border to Avenida Revolución, there was people everywhere and a bunch of noise, and music, and I was scared. I was paranoid, and I thought people were out to get me. I didn’t speak really good Spanish when I got here. I was kind of like a white boy speaking Spanish. If I would have been released in Los Angeles and I would have been able to go home to my mom and to my family, I would have felt free. I would have felt like I got out and I went home.

CYNTHIA (on tape)
Are those batteries?

JORGE
That’s my daughter, Cynthia Marie. She just turned five, and I sent her a Dora the Explorer doll with a friend who was nice enough to smuggle it across the border. My friend also took Cynthia Marie a recorder, so she could record our conversation.

CYNTHIA (on tape)
Hello! Five. Yeah, already, my birthday is now-now.

JORGE
When my daughter got on the phone, it was like…she said, “I’m five,” and I said, “Man, you must be bigger than me now! Are you real tall?” And she was like, no. And I was like, you’re five, and she was like, no but…

CYNTHIA (on tape)
How old are you?

JORGE
I was like, you know who I am? And she said, “Yeah, you’re George.”

CYNTHIA (on tape)
Yeah, you’re George. George.

JORGE
I said, “I’m you’re daddy.”

CYNTHIA (on tape)
My dad.

JORGE
And I was like, why don’t you call me daddy? Then she was like, “I don’t know.”

But the truth is like, my daughter, she doesn’t really know me…and my son, the last time I saw him was when he was two years old. And you know, their mother is raising them.

LUPITA (on tape)
I want you to start helping me now, you know? Mijo wants to go to football now, but it’s 200 bucks, and I can’t. The sign-ups are this month.

JORGE
Lupita and I broke up a long time ago. But she still needs my help to support my kids.

LUPITA (on tape)
So if you could send me some money to help out, you know?

JORGE
Let me tell you what it’s like to send money to L.A. from Tijuana. If I want to send them twenty dollars, I need another fifteen for Western Union because it costs just for the transfer. It costs fifteen dollars. I make like seventy dollars a week, and that barely gets me by for food and transportation and everything, so it’s kind of hard.

LUPITA (on tape)
I’ll call you as soon as I can.

JORGE
There are so many families that are divided in two, and they can’t see each other. My mother’s still an illegal immigrant after twenty years of living over there, and I’m over here, and there’s no way that we’ll ever be able to see each other. Unless there is some kind of place where there is immunity, and families can come from both sides of the border. And there’d be no questions asked, like a building where you can hug and kiss and see each other and visit with each other.

It’s almost been a year since I got deported over here, and my Spanish, I still sound like a white boy sometimes, and people notice it a lot. I live like, up in the hills. You would think of the wild-wild West or something like that. It’s all dirt, and the houses are made of second-hand wood sent over here from California.

I don’t like the way I’m living right now, but these are the consequences, and now I’m trying to better my life. I live at the bottom of these hills that divide California from Tijuana. And I want to climb them with my son and you know, explain everything to him, so that maybe he will understand one day.


- “Deported to Tijuana” was produced by Youth Radio's International Desk, in association with National Geographic.