Julio Borrell arrived in the United States at 26, fleeing Cuba during the Mariel exodus. Forty-six years later, at 72, a bus dropped him off in southern Mexico, about 3,200 kilometers from the U.S. border, without him even knowing where he was.
"I am in a place called Tapachula, Chiapas," he told his daughter on the phone after walking for nearly an hour to borrow a cellphone.
The story of Borrell was reconstructed by The Atlantic in a report published this Monday about migrants sent by the administration of Donald Trump to Mexico when they cannot be deported directly to their countries of origin.
Borrell had attended a routine immigration appointment in December, as he had done many times before, but this time agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained him.
He spent four months detained in a facility known as Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, and was later transferred to Eloy, Arizona. From there, he began a 47-hour bus journey to the Mexican border, followed by another trip to the southern tip of the country.
Upon arriving in Tapachula, I felt disoriented and far from the life I had built over more than four decades in the United States.
Borrell has seven American children, 11 grandchildren, and one great-grandson, according to The Atlantic. For years, he managed an auto repair shop and attended his immigration appointments periodically.
"Why the hell did they bring us here?" he asked the journalist who told his story.
Six months after arriving in Tapachula, he was surviving by repairing tires while trying to gather enough money to rent a small studio.
In the first few weeks, something unexpected happened: he recognized an old Cuban friend from Miami on the street, the owner of a tile business, who had also ended up deported there. The man had arrived in the United States from Cuba at the age of six and had permanent residency, according to the report.
«We have to get out of here. I will not die in Tapachula», Borrell told him.
Your situation is part of a reality that affects thousands of migrants. Tapachula, a city of about 350,000 inhabitants, currently houses around 60,000 foreigners of various nationalities, according to The Atlantic. Officials from the International Organization for Migration informally call it "TapaYork."
Cubans hold a prominent place among those who end up stranded there. A report by Human Rights Watch, titled "They Leave Us Here to Die," documented 4,353 Cubans, the largest group. Of the 53 deported individuals interviewed by the organization, 41 were Cuban and 17 were at least 60 years old; the oldest was 83.
Mexico has denied facilitating these deportations, although The Atlantic collected accounts from more than a dozen migrants who described the involvement of immigration agents from both countries during the transfers.
For those who arrive without knowing the city or having resources, disorientation is evident.
"They are lost. They just drag their feet. They don’t even know where they are," explained Mervil Wisdael, a Haitian who has been living in Tapachula for years.
The deportations of Cubans to third countries are not limited to Mexico. The United States has sent Cubans to African countries, while seeking agreements with other governments to accept migrants who cannot be directly repatriated.
Several Cubans stranded in Tapachula told The Atlantic that they plan to organize a caravan north. They know that reaching the U.S. border will be extremely difficult, but they want to draw attention to those who were expelled after spending years — and in some cases decades — in the United States.
Borrell is one of them: he arrived through Mariel as a 26-year-old, and 46 years later, he is trying to rebuild his life thousands of kilometers away from his children, grandchildren, and great-grandson.
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