ICE arrested him in S.F. after 29 years. He returned to a Mexico he no longer remembers.

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CHIMALHUACÁN, Mexico — Miguel Lopez will never forget his 47th birthday.

Maybe if the judge’s decision on his immigration case had landed in time, he would still be in Livermore. He’d probably come home from work at Wente Vineyards, and his wife Rosa, a U.S. citizen, would have a meal waiting.

Maybe their youngest of three children, Julian, would convince Lopez to get his favorite pineapple ice cream from Pleasanton. Maybe. If Lopez hadn’t been deported. 

Instead, Lopez spent his 47th at his childhood home in Chimalhuacán, a municipality just outside of Mexico City’s eastern border. After 29 years away, Mexico wasn’t familiar, but foreign.

His dad’s house now had new floors and doors, partially bought thanks to money Lopez sent home. The mountain in the horizon, once natural, is now filled with new houses. 

“It wasn’t how I imagined it,” Lopez said in Spanish during an interview at his father’s house. “You leave with the impression of how things were when you left. And you see everything’s different.”

Like the 75,000 other Mexicans repatriated since Trump took office, Lopez is navigating life after deportation. This January, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, like her predecessor, unveiled the strategy “México Te Abraza,” to “warmly and humanely receive Mexicans who were returned from the United States to our country.”

At the border, recent arrivals are offered special documentation, a health check-up at one of six centros de atención and $2,000 MXN pesos, roughly $100 USD, to travel home. 

“I didn’t expect to come back like this,” Lopez said. “But here I am.” 

Reintegration isn’t so easy.

The sun had barely risen on June 7 by the time Lopez got off the bus from San Ysidrio near the Mexican border. He and the other deportees, who had told him they were transferred from prison, were now in Tijuana.

It was Lopez’s first time in Mexico since he crossed the border at 18 and, at his mother’s behest, falsely told U.S. border agents he was a U.S. citizen. Now on the other side, Lopez was scared. The locals were watching him and the five or six other deportees. He ducked into the bathroom and called his wife, Rosa, back in Livermore. She didn’t yet know he’d been deported.  

Lopez was still dressed in the same outfit he wore on May 27 when he went to 620 Sansome St. for a check-in on his ongoing immigration case.

“Bring a sweater,” Rosa reminded him before they left that day; San Francisco is chilly. She also urged him to keep the $400 he left on her dresser, so they could buy clam chowder at Fisherman’s Wharf afterwards.

That had become a tradition. For decades, he’d checked in at the court without issue, no appointment missed. While waiting for him to finish, Rosa saw him call. “I said, ‘Hey, are you ready?’” she recalled. “No,” Lopez told her. “They detained me. Call my lawyer.” 

Over the next 10 days, Lopez was taken to Fresno, and then to the Golden State Annex in McFarland. He called Rosa from a tablet each night for 15 minutes. She, her daughter Stephanie, and three-year-old granddaughter Illiana, visited once.

The detention cells were cold.  “Luckily, I was wearing the sweater,” Lopez said. 

At midnight on Friday, June 6, Lopez was told to get his stuff. He was briefly transferred to the Mesa Verde ICE processing center in Bakersfield. A few hours later, he was in Tijuana. 

There, Lopez and the other deportees checked in with Mexican immigration. But he didn’t have identification; U.S. ICE agents had kept his Mexican passport and California license. (They mailed it to Rosa weeks later.) Officials couldn’t find Lopez in the Mexican government database.

While it would cause him minor problems later, Mexico still receives repatriates without documents. Officials snapped Lopez’s photo and armed him with a repatriation notice and $2,000 MXN pesos. A new chapter began. 

The first thing Lopez did afterward was buy deodorant and socks using the $400 he had taken with him on the day of his immigration appointment. The deportees tried to figure out where to stay. Lopez didn’t know anyone in Tijuana. His dad and brother lived in the state of Mexico, hundreds of miles away.

The other deportees checked in at Casa del Migrante, a nonprofit migrant shelter nearby, to spend the night. Luckily, Rosa found a friend who could house Lopez. The next day they agreed to fly to Mexico City, and Rosa would bring his birth certificate. 

It was supposed to turn out so differently, Rosa said. The night before, she was at mass, praying the rosary for Lopez’s safe return, when Lopez’s lawyer, Saad Ahmad called. Ahmad filed a temporary restraining order on Lopez’s deportation, and Lopez was granted a Saturday morning hearing. “‘This never happens,’” Ahmad excitedly told her. 

The next day, June 7, U.S. District Court Judge Trina Thompson granted the injunction on Lopez’s deportation, according to court filings. For now, he could stay. But it was too late. Hours earlier, around 5:30 a.m., Lopez had been dropped off in Tijuana.

Rosa took the rosary again and prayed. 

Lopez is out of sorts in his hometown, he said. In California, he used to wake at 4 a.m. to head to Wente Vineyards, where for nine years he’d weld, or maneuver hulking mechanical harvesters to pull grapes from the vines.

Often, when Lopez was late arriving home, he’d be lending a hand at a friend’s diesel shop. “He’s a workaholic,” Rosa said and teasingly rolled her eyes.

Mexican government programs and nonprofit organizations attempt to employ repatriates, but Lopez has struggled to find a job. Chimalhuacán is in the State of Mexico, far from the trendy tourist neighborhoods of a bustling Mexico City, and life there is modest.

The majority of his neighbors sell personal wares and food outside their homes or in the public tianguis market, or have small shops; otherwise they head into Mexico City for work. 

So far, Lopez has tried to ask around. He begs Rosa to drive his Ford F-350 truck and all his welding tools from over the border so he can start his own business. He daydreams about finding work in the Jalisco or Querétaro vineyards, but can’t afford to move right now. 

Since Lopez’s deportation, Rosa splits their money between Livermore and Mexico. For years Lopez had been the sole breadwinner, supporting his family in California, and his dad in Mexico. Without income, “I’m stressed out,” Lopez said. 

In the meantime, Lopez straightened out his identification by producing the birth certificate and received his Unique Population Registry Code for Mexican citizens, or CURP. He bought a Mexican cellphone. He’s adjusting to the limited drinking water and different culture, and how much Chimalhuacán has changed. 

He tries to assure Rosa he’s safe. Chimalhuacán is seen as one of the most unsafe municipalities in Mexico, according to a 2025 national survey. Lopez’s younger brother was murdered nearby two years ago, and his father’s house has been shot at multiple times. 

But the couple see this as a temporary chapter. Rosa said, “I’ll do anything to bring my family back together.”

There’s plenty that Lopez misses about home: Golfing, camping, his Wente coworkers. The way his friend’s children called him “Tio Chili’s,” because he frequently took them to Chili’s, or how neighbors greeted him with “Chilango,” slang for someone from Mexico City. But it’s his family that Lopez misses most. 

In Livermore, things aren’t the same, either. Rosa parked her husband’s Ford F-350 work truck at a friend’s to avoid looking at it. Their eldest son, Angel, previously a homebody, is constantly at the gym.

Lopez coaxed the youngest, Julian, to rejoin the football team for his last high school season, and now, Lopez can’t watch it. Illiana used to rush to the door when Lopez’s truck pulled in the driveway, and now pouts when her “papa” is mentioned. 

So, Lopez asked Rosa to visit Chimalhuacán for his birthday. Picking her up from the airport, the car broke down, requiring a pinch fix. In bed, thoughts of Lopez’s situation overwhelmed Rosa and she had a panic attack. She doesn’t feel safe in Mexico.

But on his birthday, the couple sat and joked at Lopez’s father’s table, sunlight striking their tattoos. Lopez sipped mezcal, and the two planned to go out to eat later. 

Rosa will stay in Mexico until her daughter Stephanie’s birthday on Aug. 10. She regrets Lopez will miss that, along with Angel’s and Rosa’s birthday in September. 

Meanwhile, Lopez has tried reconnecting with Chimalhuacán. His eldest brother and his young nieces visit often. Chimalhuacán is getting used to Lopez, too. The shop owner around the corner was shocked when Lopez told him he was the boy from long ago. Lopez’s grand-nieces watch him and Rosa in the house. One asked: “Why’d you come back?” 

Lopez can’t yet imagine life here forever. Unlike other deportees, he has a chance at residing in the United States again, and it’s a dream neither he or Rosa will cede. Maybe, they say, Lopez will be back for the youngest’s birthday in November. 

Like other immigrants, Lopez’s case is complex. Rosa and Lopez married in 2001, and Lopez applied for a green card in 2007. The Department of Homeland Security initiated removal proceedings against Lopez for not having valid entry documents and for falsely claiming he was a U.S. citizen when he entered at the age of 18.

In November 2012, an immigration judge who disagreed with the removal proceedings granted Lopez a green card. The judge’s decision was appealed by DHS, citing its discretion to deport him, and revoked his green card.

Lopez appealed and took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to take the case. Now a hearing is scheduled in the district court for Oct. 7, Ahmad, his lawyer, said in a telephone interview. The hearing had already been rescheduled, but this time, “I don’t see them changing it,” Ahmad said.

Lopez and Rosa have faith. “Sometimes God sends you the hardest things to see if you’re strong enough for it,” Rosa said. “I’ve already spent so much time fighting,” Lopez said, “And so much money on it.”