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I have met many people in Tijuana who were deported thanks to what we call a "California roll" or having a brake light out. It's been awful for years but it is hellish now. It is why I spent so many years trying to call attention to what was happening here.
And I mean people with no other record, people who are squeaky clean but for being undocumented. Almost all of them were in the process of working through the immigration system, but the system is backed up by 12-20 years. Some didn't even know they were undocumented.
If you're wondering how that happens: Many young families came to the United States to seek better lives for their babies in the 1980s and felt such great shame at being unable to maneuver our byzantine immigration system that they forged documents for their kids or just never
brought it up, hoping that their children would be able to blend in. So these kids, who are now in their 30s, came to the United States as babies or toddlers and are American in every single way. Imagine you grow up in a country, pay your taxes, go to school, then one day you are
in a hurry to get to work and roll a stop sign. You think everything is on the up and up but within an hour you're in a different country and can't come back to the United States. That's been happening for years. And before you give me the "well they should have done it legally"
bullshit, I will point out that our same ridiculously backed up immigration system changes all the time, so they did not come here "illegally." When the laws change around you after the fact, are you a criminal? When you are doing everything "the right way" and it's not good
enough, does that mean you deserve to be kicked out of your home?
By the way, when I visited the caravan from Central America in Tijuana last November, there was a significant portion of the crowd who spoke American English - because they had grown up in the United States. They were trying to get home to their families.
Finally, no one gets notified when you are getting held in immigration detention or have been deported. So if you have kids waiting to be picked up from school, or a cat or goldfish or a sick family member you're trying to get to, well that's just too fucking bad.
