The Deported Americans
More than 600,000 U.S.-born children of undocumented parents live in Mexico. What happens when you return to a country you’ve never known?
The school day at Escuela Secundaria Técnica Número 26 starts early. As the first rays of sunshine make their way over the foothills of Popocatépetl volcano in central Mexico, the narrow streets fill with students in ones and twos and little laughing groups.
Ashley Mantilla’s day starts earlier than most. On a Monday last June, long before the sun rose, the 15-year-old left the small cinder-block house she shares with her sister, brother, and parents. She walked past the lime tree under which the family entertains guests, past the outhouse and the thin horse tied up next to her grandparents’ home, to the road that winds by a deep ravine, and into the center of her small town, perched high in the ridges below the volcano. There, she waited for a minibus that would drive her half an hour to Número 26. It’s not a cheap trip to make every day, and her parents are willing to pay for it not because they have extra money but because they think it’s a better option than the local school. There are real teachers there instead of video lessons, and specialty classes include coding in addition to agriculture, food preservation, and beekeeping.
By 7:30, the school’s courtyard was packed with teenagers. They lined up in straight rows and placed their hands across their chests as the Mexican national anthem played on a loudspeaker. Ashley had PE that day, so she had her dark hair pulled back and was wearing her gym uniform: track pants and a polo shirt embroidered with the words Niños Héroes, or heroic children, a group of historical figures that the school honors as a kind of mascot. The heroes were six military cadets, the youngest of them 13, who died defending a castle in Mexico City from American invaders in 1847.
It was, in other words, a long way from the school days Ashley used to experience, back when she was an American student growing up in an American town and studying in an American public school. In those days, her father, Felix, worked as a cook in a restaurant and did maintenance on CONTINUE READING: The Deported Americans — The California Sunday Magazine
