This is what the hours after being deported look like

Luz María Hernández gazes blankly across the shaded courtyard, clutching a cellphone in one hand and a sodden handkerchief in the other. Less than 48 hours ago, Hernández, 45, was deported to Tijuana after 25 years as an undocumented migrant in southern California. Her five children, aged three to 23, were born in California, and they now have to live without their mother. Minutes before being escorted to the border, US immigration agents informed her that she was banned from entering the US for 10 years. Published in The Guardian | By Nina Lakhani in Tijuana, Baja California / photos: Prometeo Lucero This piece was co-commissioned by Itzel Guille and Guardian editors for We’re Here To Stay.

Migrants who seek to cross the border gather every morning in the Salesian community breakfast room of Padre Chava to have a free breakfast. Photograph: Prometeo Lucero/The Guardian

Elio Ramírez, born in Jalisco and deported from the US, works in a car wash business facility in Zona Norte, Tijuana. Photograph: Prometeo Lucero/The Guardian

Prototypes of the wall are seen on the US side of the border. In the Mexican side of Otay, the carcass of a burned vehicle lays where drug-violence has led more than a thousand dead people just in 2017. Photograph: Prometeo Lucero/The Guardian

See story in The Guardian website

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