Deportees returning to Mexico find they must learn how to live in a land often controlled by cartels

By Steve Fisher, Kate Linthicum

This article was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom dedicated to high-quality coverage from the U.S.-Mexico border, the Los Angeles Times, with data compiled by Quinto Elemento Lab, an investigative nonprofit based in Mexico.

Adrián Ramírez hadn’t been to his hometown in western Mexico for more than two decades. When he finally returned there early last year after being deported from the United States, he found the place transformed.

Ramírez remembered the town as vibrant. But the discotheque where he used to dance through the night in his twenties was gone. The bustling evening market, where locals gather for tacos, now empties out early. After 10 p.m., cartel members wielding military-grade weapons take control of the streets.

“It is no longer the same Mexico of my childhood,” said Ramírez, 45, who asked to be identified by his middle and last name for security reasons. “There was more joy, more freedom. But that’s not the case anymore.”

Anyone returning to their hometown after decades away will note changes — old businesses close and new ones open, some people move away and some die. Adjusting to such shifts has long been part of the Mexican migrant experience.

But many of the tens of thousands of people who have been deported to Mexico by the Trump administration have spent decades in the U.S. and are discovering that their country has also changed in more profound ways.

Criminal groups, better armed and better organized than in the past, now control about a third of Mexican territory, according to an analysis by the U.S. military. Gangs have branched out beyond drug trafficking to extort small businesses and dominate entire industries, such as the avocado and lime trade. In some regions, criminals charge taxes on just about anything — tortillas and chicken, cigarettes and beer.

Parts of Michoacán, the state where Ramírez is from, now resemble an actual battlefield, with criminal groups fighting each other with grenade launchers, drones rigged with explosives and improvised land mines.

Returning migrants are vulnerable to violence because they stand out. Many speak Spanglish. Their stylish haircuts, often with fades on the sides, set them apart in rural communities. So does their gringo-style attire, like baggy pants and T-shirts touting their favorite sports teams — Dodgers, Raiders, Dallas Cowboys. Ramírez said that even his mannerisms, which had changed from years up north, quickly identified him as an outsider.

Cartels single out returning migrants for kidnapping or extortion because they are perceived to have money, said Israel Concha, who runs Nuevo Comienzos, or New Beginnings, a U.S.-based nonprofit with offices in Las Vegas and Mexico City that supports deportees. Returnees don’t often know how to navigate cartel-run checkpoints or local rules set by criminal groups.

“We’re an easy target,” Concha said.

Concha said he was abducted and tortured by cartel members in 2014 after he was deported to Mexico. He said 16 migrants from his organization’s support group have been assassinated or disappeared since he founded his organization.

Ten of those cases happened in the last year.

In May, a recently returned man vanished after leaving his job at a hotel in the central state of Querétaro, Concha said. His parents, giving up hope of finding him alive, held a funeral and a Mass for him in October.

Ramírez left his town in Michoacán state for the United States when he was 21, hoping to save money so he could come back home and build a house of his own.

But life happened — Ramírez got married and had three children — and he stayed. He was washing cars and driving for Uber in Nashville before he was deported.

Returning to Michoacán was bittersweet. He cried with happiness as he hugged his mother and siblings the first time in years. But shortly after, he was interrogated by a cartel member on the street who wanted to know his

name and what he did for a living. Another cartel member photographed him while he strolled the town plaza.

His town had once been famous for its cheese production. Now its most dominant industry is fuel theft, a booming multimillion-dollar enterprise in Mexico. Criminals with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel recently burned down the town’s two gas stations and killed the owner to assert their control over the pueblo, Ramírez said. They then set up their own illegal stations, leaving locals no choice but to buy from them.

The authorities were no help.

Ramírez learned from his family that the mayor had been hand-picked by the cartel. The police are also in cahoots with criminals. After a relative suffered an accident, the cops who responded ended up extorting him, Ramírez said.

Ramírez began to fear for his life. He wondered whether it might be time to leave, and if so, where he would go.

A growing number of Mexicans are being forced to flee their communities because of violence, data show. The conflict-ridden states of Michoacán, Chiapas and Zacatecas have seen particularly high levels of displacement.

Israel Ibarra, a migration expert at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (College of the Northern Border), said migrants returning to war-torn communities often end up having to leave again.

“They are not only becoming deported people,” he said. “They will experience double-forced displacement.”

That is what happened to a man who returned to a town a few hours away from where Ramírez grew up, in the mountains of Michoacán. A local rancher hired the migrant to manage his herd of cattle.

Contracting outsiders requires vetting and approval by the regional faction of the cartel, which the rancher had not done. No locals had dared help the rancher repair his fence and care for his herd because of the cartel requisites, leaving the rancher with a limited employment pool.

The migrant, who declined to provide his name because he feared for his life, didn’t fully recognize the power wielded by cartels and took the job.

The rancher also paid better than others, to the consternation of the Jalisco cartel, which controls wages in the area.

One morning, sicarios arrived at the migrant’s home and fired round after round of bullets into the building. The worker fled out the back door as gunmen stormed in.

“They left me in ruin,” he said. “They took everything.” He went into hiding in the state capital of Michoacán.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum touts data showing that homicides fell during her first year in office. But the number of people being disappeared has spiked across the country, particularly in cartel-controlled regions. In Jalisco state, the stronghold of the Jalisco cartel, disappearances have doubled in the last year alone. And shocking acts of violence continue to make headlines.

“For people who left a long time ago, many of them are coming back to communities that are much more violent than they were when they left,” said Andrew Selee of the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute.

In Michocán last fall, the Jalisco cartel was accused of assassinating a prominent mayor who had vowed to hold criminals accountable. In December the group detonated a car bomb in a municipality located along a top cocaine-trafficking route, killing four police officers.

Deportations to Mexico were lower last year than either of the two previous years, according to data compiled by Quinto Elemento Lab, an investigative nonprofit based in Mexico, citing the country’s National Migration Institute. But Trump’s hardline deportation campaign means fewer migrants who were returned to Mexico are attempting to cross back into the U.S., experts said.

Sheinbaum’s government launched a reintegration program called México Te Abraza, or Mexico welcomes you with open arms, that has provided limited support to those returning, according to migrant advocates.

Under the program, migrants are supposed to be given around $100 and a bus ticket to their hometown. But Concha said some don’t receive the money, and that migrants need much more help. “The program doesn’t

work,” Concha said. “We need something more comprehensive that also supports emotional and mental health.”

Ramírez wants to return to the U.S. to be with his family, but is afraid of ending up in detention there.

He misses his children, and dreams of buying them plane tickets so they can visit. But he is afraid of exposing them to Mexico’s violence. “It’s a very different kind of life here,” he said. “It hurts me what’s happening.”

He decided to leave his pueblo a few months ago. The town where he is now living seems more tranquil, although it is also controlled by the Jalisco cartel. After he got a job at a tortilleria, his new employer warned him: cartel members may stop by to ask him where he’s from.

Story edited by Steve Padilla of the Los Angeles Times.

Patricia Ramirez and Efrain Tzuc of Quinto Elemento Lab contributed to this report.