BBC Mexico Correspondent
BBCWhen Alberto Salgan was deported from the US in January, this was the first time he set foot in Mexico because he was a child.
Born at the coastal resort of Akapulco, his parents took him to America when he was just six months old.
Growing in California, they were seduced by false glamor of gang’s life.
After his arrest in San Diego for gang activity, Alberto was sent back to Mexico as President Trump was assuming a position, and found himself homeless and lonely in the country of his birth.
“It was a shock. It is still,” he believes. “When I went to Mexico here, I was really lost. No family, no food, no clothes, nothing.”
Alberto says that he almost forgot how to speak and read Spanish. “The good thing is that I did not lose it completely because it helps me (to be bilingual),” he reflects.
In fact, his language skills saved the 30 -year -old man from being destitute. Through a deported aid organization, he heard that a local company-ez call center-English was looking for speakers.
Working as telephone sales agents is not paid well, but employees can earn commission, and the regular salary check gave Alberto stability, which she craved.
“I had to do something to go back to my feet. Thanks to the call center, now I have,” he tells me during a break between the call.
Almost every agent in the EZ call center is an exiled, including the owner of the company, Daniel Ruiz.
He was also born in Mexico and grew up in the US before the low-level drug crime in the early 20s. Daniel says that he may be related to the initial sense of disorientation of his employees in Mexico.
“We are all dealing with the shock of culture,” he says on a stable us of telephone calls.
“The life of all of us is there, went to school there, brought to American culture, there is family. We are from here but we are from there too.”
In their booths, agents work through a long list of American phone numbers, some preacher calls or sales, others call about loan collection and refinance.
All agents speak fluently English, and customers at the other end of the line are not intelligent that they are talking to people in Mexico instead of America.
Daniel says agents like Alberto – who fell into a weak age in the US and fell into a crime, but are ready to turn on a new leaf in Mexico – among their most trusted employees.
“He does not have almost another mark on his criminal record, and he has the right discipline to catch his jobs,” he explains.
After exile, his experiences of Daniel Ruiz have given information about his business decisions.
At the same time, along with the Tellicelles Company, they co-establish a human organization-to-establish-called the Borderline Crisis Center-provides exile with food, shelter and support on their arrival in Mexico.
After his inauguration, President Trump said he says “the greatest exile in American history”.
He has talked about removing millions of unspent people from American soil, and raids from Chicago to California in the early days of their presidential immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) agents.
Mexican human organizations, including the Borderline Crisis Center, hanged themselves for a large arrival of returns.
So far, however, not a physical. There are no major hurdles of migrants on the border, and migrant shelters in Tijuana are not currently flowing.
The latest figures of the Government of Mexican actually show that the number of exile from America to Mexico Was less He was for the same period last year during the first three months of Trump’s second administration.
Mexican President Claudia Shinbam said Mexico had approximately 39,000 deports from February to April, out of 33,000 Mexicans. It compares with 52,000 for the same three months in 2024.
However, the decline was in part due to a decrease in the number of people trying to enter the US at first. Migrant “encounter” on the US southern border by the US Customs and Border Security (CBP) agents has fallen to its lowest level in years.
The threat of large-scale exile with other factors from military deployment at the joint-border, Lalvador can serve as an effective preventive to the high-profile exile of the migrants.
The Trump administration is also carrying forward the idea of self-expansion for unspecified immigrants through blunt warnings.
Nevertheless, people are being sent back to Tijuana on a daily basis. Many people have to face because they try to live in dusty and dangerous border city.
Some companies that offer exile have become even more important to avoid a slide in criminality.
Beyond a small venture such as EZ call centers, a large company named American survey company or ASC also depends on a deported workforce.
With his sister company, Voxcentrix, ASC has some 550 call center stations in Tijuana, where agents call everything from election voting to customer satisfaction survey.
ASC Chief Happiness Officer Nora Diaz laughed and said, “What happened in America, what happens in America.” “We really don’t check the background on it.”
Nora says that her job focuses on the good of the employees, so that it can help to re -organize them.
“We understand that everyone has a past, and we do not do justice based on it. We do not ask about it during our interview process.
On the ASC, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” the policy was invaluable for the new beginning of Luis Luna.
He grew up in Orange Country, California, when he was a few months old, he was taken to America.
“Unfortunately, as a child, I made some bad options: joined a gang, ran around with the wrong crowd. I spent a lot, I cost a life sentence. I was a life guard in California State Jail,” Luis says.
While in jail in California, he enrolled for every educational program available and worked hard on his rehabilitation. On release, he was sent back to Mexico in January, such as Trump was ready for his inaugural speech.
It is now 50 years old and is involved in the gang -related tattoos, Louis knew that he would not get many other opportunities in life.
“I did not find any family here. My family is ASC, people with whom I got in my employment are my family and my friends.”
For Luis, externally dull telephony’s work has provided an anchor that he needs to stay out of crime, something that he says that he knows the former-Gang members in the struggle of America.
He said, “I did not feel any decision from the first day. I felt that they only opened their arms and took me in. I think I would stay on the streets right now, if it was not for ASC,” he says.
While the collective exile program of the Trump administration is not yet at several levels in Mexico, some believe it may lift the speed in the coming months.
If so, the exiles with gangs like Alberto and Louis will require some help to resume, even though their crimes.
In Tijuana, many of them will find it at the end of a telephone line.
