When I was 7, my family left Mexico City for Texas in search of safety and opportunity. It’s a story so familiar, it’s practically foundational — the idea that, however imperfect, the U.S. is a place where people from anywhere can start over safely.
But since Trump came back into office last year, that promise has further eroded.
The anti-immigrant rhetoric has ramped up so forcefully that ICE has been willing to kill American citizens in order to enact its agenda. The threats of mass deportations and violence are working: For the first time since the Great Depression, more people are leaving the U.S. than arriving. Among Gen Z and millennials, a new aspiration is taking hold. On social media, some are saying that the new American Dream is to leave for a better life.
Nowhere is that shift more evident than among undocumented immigrants who grew up in the United States. Brought here as children and raised as Americans, many are now making the life-altering decision to self-deport. Increasingly, younger Mexican deportees are choosing Mexico City.
Abel Ortiz, now 38, was two months old when his family immigrated to California. He never questioned his immigration status until 10th grade, when his friends began applying for their first jobs. That’s when his dad had to sit him down to explain that they were undocumented. Without a Social Security card, Ortiz would have to find jobs that paid under the table, which were mostly at fast-food restaurants. And Ortiz did that for a while, but at 25, he wanted more for himself, and his friend helped him get a job at a hair salon.
