This episode accompanies the August 2026 release of Desterrados al Sur: el costo humano de la deportación ("Banished to the South: The Human Cost of Mass Deportation"), a report WOLA published jointly with the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) in Nogales, Sonora, and the Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Matías de Córdova in Tapachula, Chiapas. WOLA's Adam Isacson speaks with his co-authors, Juan Cuéllar Torres of the Kino Border Initiative and Josué Hildegardo Gómez Guzmán of Fray Matías, about what they are witnessing at Mexico's northern and southern borders.

The conversation is in Spanish; an English-subtitled video version is available on WOLA's YouTube channel and embedded on the episode landing page.

Deportation to Mexico has undergone a dramatic reshaping as a result of the second Trump administration's "mass deportation" policy. With access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border effectively closed, the population both organizations serve has shifted from people heading north to people expelled from the United States—many after decades of life, family, and work there.

In mid-April, the U.S. government largely stopped returning Mexican nationals across the land border and began flying them instead to cities in Mexico's interior and south. Cuéllar explains that Nogales, once a hub of deportation infrastructure, now receives only a trickle: roughly 150 Mexicans and 120 non-Mexicans per month, with as few as ten people a week reaching KBI's shelter. Meanwhile, more than 1,100 third-country nationals per month are deported across the land border and then placed on buses by Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM) and sent south to Villahermosa and Tapachula.

Gómez describes what happens on arrival in Tapachula: Mexican deportees are received in improvised tent facilities on concrete slabs in extreme heat, allowed to stay no more than two days, given roughly US$100, and directed to bus terminals—often for journeys of days across territory controlled by organized crime, with no follow-up to confirm they reach home.

Third-country nationals, many of whom were told they would be released in Mexico, are instead taken to the Siglo XXI detention facility, without information about how long they will be held or whether they will be deported onward.

Once released, they face a near-total barrier to rights because ICE routinely fails to return passports, birth certificates, phones, and other belongings. Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Haitians, and Central Americans who want to go home cannot document themselves; consulates are far off, and people without papers cannot legally leave Chiapas. Nicaraguans stripped of nationality are left stateless. Elderly deportees—some removed after decades in the United States—end up homeless and unable even to recall relatives' phone numbers.

The episode also details family separation as generalized practice, including mothers whose children were taken at the moment of arrest and who cannot travel north to recover custody, and parents forced to leave U.S.-citizen children with neighbors. Both guests describe searing psychological harm, labor exploitation, rising costs in Tapachula, and an asylum system in which COMAR interviews take a year to eighteen months, humanitarian visas require amparo litigation, and a missed check-in signature can void a case entirely.

"There is a deliberate intent, both from the U.S. government and the Mexican government, to wear people out and encourage them to return to their countries," Gómez contends. It is difficult to draw any other conclusion.

Recommendations are directed largely at the Mexican government: negotiate and publish any agreement governing third-country deportations, press Washington to return Mexicans to their regions of origin and to return confiscated documents and belongings, expand regularization pathways, stop detaining arriving deportees, improve reception facilities, open México Te Abraza centers to civil society, and coordinate across federal, state, and municipal authorities. The conversation closes with reflections on staff care and the emotional toll of this work.

Update: Just a quick note—the processing times mentioned in this episode are based on operations prior to the last week of August 2026. The Mexican Agency for Refugee Support (COMAR) has begun to issue same-day refugee application certificates. This keeps asylum seekers out of legal limbo by giving them immediate access to temporary IDs and lawful status. On top of that, it speeds up their access to key rights like formal work, healthcare, and schooling.

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