Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Helping Deportees


Carlos Martinez was in a state of total panic after being deported from the United States to the Mexican border city of Matamoros — he had no money, nowhere to go, and, worst of all, he didn't speak Spanish. The 30-year-old New Yorker had left Mexico as a baby; when the Department of Homeland Security sent him south last May after he had served a prison term, he landed in a foreign land.


"I was crying when I went over the border. It was just a big joke to the U.S. immigration officials to have this Mexican who doesn't speak Spanish. But I was terrified," Martinez said.


Eventually, a fellow deportee invited Martinez to his family home in Santa Maria Zoyatla, a dirt-poor village of corn farmers, and they hitchhiked 1,000 miles south from the border. Having worked as a limo driver in New York, Martinez had no idea how to work the land, and after a few months he moved onto a nearby town to sell clothes in a market.




Importance: Mexico is helping out the people the U.S. sends to them, and it will be the next step to see if the people Mexico helps try and return to the U.S. (legally or illegally) or if they decide to stay in Mexico.


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