Living Underground: Deported From the US, Some in Mexico are Making Homes in Holes Amy Isackson - The California Report
go to original May 7, 2013

Abimael Martinez lives in a hole he dug in the Tijuana River channel, a short walk from the U.S.-Mexico border. (Amy Isackson)

As Congress debates immigration reform, nearly 11 million people who call the United States home are living an underground existence to avoid detection by the authorities. But what happens when people are deported? Quite a few Mexicans who’ve been sent back across the border are now living underground - literally - in the border city of Tijuana.

The banks of the Tijuana River channel are about 30 feet high and lined with concrete. The river bottom is sandy soil. The river cuts through the city for miles, draining sewage and storm runoff. As I stood in the bottom one recent day, trash swirled in eddies and a bloated dead dog floated by.

Some people live in the river channel. No one knows exactly the number, but possibly as many as 3,000. Many were deported from the United States. One of them is Abimael Martinez.

“This is the main entrance I made for when the police come,” said Martinez, showing me around his makeshift dwelling, just a few hundred yards from the U.S.-Mexico border fence.

It hasn’t always been home. Martinez lived in California for eight years, in Riverside, and owned an automotive body shop. He went to church, had a girlfriend and was like a dad to her kids.

But two years ago, he was detained at a traffic checkpoint for driving without a license and was deported to Tijuana. Now he’s dodging the cops.

Read the rest at The California Report

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