Mexico’s Pledge to Give Deportees Jobs Hits Snag Over US Flights

Mexico’s government has pledged to provide jobs for citizens deported from the US, but recent data shows that barely 4% of the tens of thousands expelled since late January have been matched with employment. 

Mexican officials initially expected that planes carrying deportees would land in Mexico City, where they had organized services to receive them. But their plans were disrupted when US deportation flights began landing instead at airports in southern Mexico.

The shift underscores the broader immigration crackdown pursued by President Donald Trump, as US authorities increasingly return Mexican migrants to airports near the Guatemalan border — apparently to discourage them from attempting the arduous journey north again. 

It also leaves many far from job opportunities and other reintegration services which are concentrated in the capital and in northern Mexico, undermining a strategy designed by President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration in partnership with private companies to welcome them home.

Making matters worse for the would-be migrants, some of those deported by plane to Tapachula in Chiapas state, and Villahermosa, the capital of Tabasco state, were kept in the dark by US officials.

“Several of them mentioned to us that at no time was it explained to them that they were going to be deported to southern Mexico,” said Karen Pérez, the head of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Mexico. 

She added that Mexico’s migration institute INM has transported deportees from the Tapachula airport to a nearby bus terminal. While the government provides them with a one-time cash benefit, many still can’t afford a ticket home, stranding them where jobs are scarce. Chiapas and Tabasco are among Mexico’s poorest states.

INM declined to comment for this story or provide information on its plans to better assist deportees sent to southern Mexico.

Not a single deportation plane has landed in Mexico City since Feb. 17, according to publicly-available flight data. Instead, 46 deportation planes have flown to Tapachula, at the southern tip of Mexico, and another 47 have landed in nearby Villahermosa. While the Mexican government is aware of the schedule of the US deportation flights, it’s not clear how much lead time Washington provides.

Most of the flights are operated by Miami-based charter carrier GlobalX, said Tom Cartwright, a former JP Morgan executive who now advocates for migrants and who collected the flight data. His count shows that the number of Mexican deportees expelled via flights versus land crossings has risen sharply, from around 12% of the total in January to reach more than a third by late May.

While Trump officials have not scaled up deportations compared to those registered during the previous administration, the US has stepped up raids targeting unlawful migrants as well as yanking temporary protections for many others. Over the past few days, it dramatically escalated enforcement actions, targeting anti-deportation protesters in Los Angeles by calling up National Guard troops as well as several hundred active duty Marines.

Last month, Sheinbaum’s interior minister told reporters that some 1,500 deported Mexicans have landed jobs in Mexico since Trump returned to the White House. But that covers only around 4% of the nearly 40,000 she says have been deported over the roughly four-month period.

The US Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment about the total number of deportees this year or the increase in the number of flights to pair of southern Mexican cities.

The day after Trump took office, Sheinbaum’s government formally launched its deportee reception program dubbed “Mexico Embraces You.” At the time, Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodriguez touted months of preparations, which included help registering for social security benefits as well as a 2,000-peso voucher that can be converted to cash. She said the program would “provide our compatriots with an appropriate reception and give them certainty of opportunities for a dignified life in their native country.”

The program enlists the support of leading business association CCE, and more than 380 companies including Coca-Cola bottler and convenience store operator Femsa as well as retail giant Walmart. Rodriguez has claimed that 60,000 permanent jobs have been offered up for repatriated Mexicans by CCE-affiliated firms.

The CCE purchased office equipment and hired staff for job fairs to assist expelled Mexicans at Mexico City’s AIFA airport. But so far, the chairs and tables purchased in March have not yet been used for any fairs “because regular flights haven’t arrived,” according to Donaciano Domínguez, the coordinator of the program for the CCE. 

Instead, contract workers promote online job placements and make follow up calls. The hangar designated to host the fairs is now primarily a warehouse for cargo and aircraft repairs, said Domínguez.

Sheinbaum’s office and the interior ministry did not respond to questions about whether her government has been consulted by US officials on where deportation flights land, or provide updated deportation figures. 

Since the beginning of this year, large numbers of deported Mexicans have been expelled across US-Mexico land crossings. But so far, no CCE job fairs have so far greeted deportees there. Meanwhile, the group points to the lack of space at smaller airports in southern Mexico to host fairs where job openings could be offered.

Dana Graber Ladek, chief of the UN migration agency’s Mexico mission, noted that much of the Mexican government’s repatriation resources have been directed near the US-Mexico border. The UN agency organized nearly three dozen job fairs last year for deported Mexicans, mostly in northern and central Mexico.

“These repatriated Mexicans are going to need to be where jobs are and where their family connections are, so if that’s not in the south, they will need to make their way to those locations,” she said.

Around 40% of the more than 70,000 job openings reported in mid-May were located in the northern industrial hub of Nuevo León state, Mexico City and the surrounding State of Mexico, plus west-central Jalisco state, according to CCE data. By contrast, Chiapas and Tabasco are among the states with the fewest openings, less than 1,000 each.

Beyond the geographical mismatch, available jobs are often a bad fit, according to Ariel Ruiz, an analyst with the DC-based Migration Policy Institute.

“These types of jobs often times do not give returnees an opportunity to exercise the skills that they learned while they were abroad,” he said. But he added that Sheinbaum deserves credit for being more proactive than previous administrations.

Ruiz pointed to government help obtaining identification documents, beds in tent shelters, as well as funds for transportation to their home towns.

Eddie, a Mexican deported in February, explained in an interview that he had to prove that he had been living in northern Mexico to avoid being sent south. He said a fellow deportee from western Michoacan state was flown to Tabasco because he was unable to make his case.

For Eddie, who asked that his surname be withheld for fear of reprisals, the US government’s goal is clear: Trump “wants to make it as hard as possible” for deportees to be anywhere near the US border.

Many deported Mexicans will almost certainly face further upheaval even after they step off the plane, but some more than others.

Migrants from Indigenous communities that mainly speak native languages face additional hurdles. Fabiola Mancilla, the head of Indigenous migrant aid group PUCOMIT, argues that the deportees her organization supports are unlikely to seek out factory jobs since many instead opt to return to their hometowns before agonizing over what to do next.

“There’s two options, the first is migrating to the fields in the north of the country, and going back to the United States,” said Mancilla. “People are never going to stop migrating.”

With assistance from Alicia A. Caldwell.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.