The ‘Mexican dream’: American women move to the neighboring country to live with deported husbands

After Alejandro Pérez’s deportation, his wife Janie and their two daughters, Luna and Lexie, went to live with him in Mexico KIND JANIE PÉREZ Janie Hughes Pérez was surprised when her husband called a few minutes after leaving home for work. And, with the phone line open, she heard that the immigration police were arresting him. At that moment, she understood that her life would change forever. But what she didn’t imagine was that she would end up living in Mexico, with her husband and two young daughters. “There is nothing more important than being together,” said she, an American citizen who does not speak Spanish, despite the difficulties faced in starting from scratch in an unfamiliar country. This type of decision has been affecting families with mixed immigration status (one American spouse and the other, an undocumented immigrant), since the President of the United States, Donald Trump, increased the detentions and deportations of foreign citizens illegally staying in the United States, at the beginning of his second presidential term, in January 2025. Trending videos on g1 Other couples, such as Raegan Klein and Alfredo Linares, preferred to voluntarily go and live on the other side of the border to avoid the risk of deportation. “If something happened to him, I could never forgive myself,” Klein said from Puerto Vallarta, on Mexico’s western coast. BBC News Mundo (the BBC’s Spanish-language service) traced the story of these two American citizens who, alongside their husbands, are beginning a new stage of their lives in Mexican territory. The Pérez couple on their wedding day, in the American state of Missouri. Kindness Janie Hughes ‘I had tears of happiness when I saw him again’ Alejandro Pérez left home at 6:30 am to go to work, on October 23rd last year. He said goodbye to his wife, Janie, and his two young daughters, Luna and Lexie, and walked out the door. What the family didn’t know was that that moment would be the last time he would set foot in their home in St. Louis, in the American state of Missouri. About 15 minutes later, Janie Pérez received a phone call from her husband saying, “I think ICE is here.” He was referring to agents from the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for its acronym in English. ‘I fell to my knees on the ground, crying without stopping’, says the 29-year-old American KINDNESS JANIE PÉREZ “We started praying”, says Janie, until they made him get out of the car. At that moment, she heard an agent saying: “Alejandro Pérez, we have an arrest warrant for you.” The connection was then cut. “I fell to my knees on the floor, crying non-stop,” says the 29-year-old American. Pérez is a cook and, that night, he was going to prepare tacos for the pastor of the Presbyterian church they had both attended for years. But the dinner had to be suspended as soon as the arrest became known. Because they did not have documents, they both knew that the most likely scenario was deportation to Mexico. And that’s what happened. The idea of ​​separating her family, for Janie Pérez, was “simply inconceivable”, even if she needed to leave her life in Missouri behind and start a new one in a country completely unknown to her. “There is nothing more important than being together,” she told the BBC. For the Pérezs, religion has been a fundamental part of their relationship since they met in 2019. They worked at the same cafe, where he cooked and she was a waitress. “He is also a man of faith and that was very important to me,” says Janie. As time passed, they decided to get married. And, as he had no documents, they went to consult a lawyer to try to regularize his situation. The procedures yielded no results. And, even though they knew he was at risk of being arrested, the couple tried to carry on with their lives as normally as possible. That was until the day everything fell apart and he was detained by ICE agents. From then on, it was clear that her husband’s next stop would be Mexico. But how long would he spend in detention awaiting deportation? While they were waiting for the judge’s decision, she surprised him one Sunday and went to see him at the detention center. “As we couldn’t touch each other, we placed our hands face to face, separated by glass,” she says. “And we cried together.” Janie Pérez also had the opportunity to see him from a distance during his court hearings, with his hands and feet shackled and chains around his waist. “It was painful to see him like that,” she laments. But that was what the law determined, as Pérez entered the United States without documents. I ask, then, why the country should allow him to stay, if the legislation is clear in this regard. Janie Pérez says that her husband was born in Michoacán, one of the Mexican states where criminal organizations maintain their operations center and recruit, under threat, children and young people to work with them. Alejandro Pérez crossed the border for the first time alongside his father, when he was around seven years old. They returned to their country, but, a few years later, he tried his luck by traveling to the United States without authorization on two occasions. In total, he lived about 16 years as an undocumented immigrant. “Although he crossed the border without authorization, I think he made a morally correct decision when traveling to the United States”, argues his wife. After all, he looked for opportunities and wanted to live far from criminal organizations. “All these years, he dedicated himself to working and has no criminal record,” she says. Still, I highlight to her that the Court’s decisions do not make this type of moral distinction. “Unfortunately, no,” she responds. But what’s happening now, with the mass arrests, is that, she says, they don’t differentiate between people accused of violent crimes and people who never did anything to anyone. “It makes me think that many want this to be a white-only country,” according to Janie Pérez. “I’m white and that doesn’t make me a better person.” The interview took place in early March, when her husband’s expulsion was imminent. The expectation was confirmed and he was deported on March 11. A few days later, she traveled to Mexico with her two daughters. “I had tears of happiness when I saw him again at the airport,” said the American, in a video call alongside her husband, from the Mexican state of Querétaro, in the central region of the country. The same thing happened to him. When he saw his three-year-old daughter, Luna, approaching to hug him, he felt a deep emotion. “It’s not possible to explain it in words”, according to him. But this happiness was accompanied by very difficult moments. Alejandro Pérez says that sometimes he feels confused. He wakes up in the middle of the night, looks around and wonders if it’s all true. Pérez still doesn’t know how he will be able to adapt to a country that sometimes seems strange to him. “Up until now, I still think this is all a dream. But I believe in God and I know he did this for a purpose.” More aggressive immigration policy Even with a marital relationship, undocumented foreigners face difficulties in obtaining permanent residence (the green card) through marriage, unlike foreigners who enter the country regularly. A letter signed in November 2023 by the then director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (Uscis) indicates that around 1.1 million American citizens are married to undocumented people. This is the official estimate currently most used, due to the lack of more recent data. And the same is true of the total number of immigrants living in the United States without authorization. The latest projections from the Pew Research Center, with data from July 2023, indicate that there are around 14 million people in this situation. The number represents about 4% of the entire American population. ICE agents have been carrying out raids in different parts of the country, looking for undocumented immigrants, to send them to detention centers GETTY IMAGES/Reproduction The study center indicates that it is likely that, currently, the population of unauthorized immigrants is smaller, due to the immigration policies of the American government. The White House has launched an offensive to stop what it considers an “invasion”. Its priority is to “expel the worst of the worst illegal aliens with criminal records,” according to a statement published in December by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). President Trump has repeated the same statement countless times. But in practice, many of the deportees who entered the United States without authorization have a clean record. A survey carried out by the conservative think tank Instituto Cato revealed that only 5% of people detained by ICE were convicted of violent crimes, while the vast majority do not have any type of criminal record. Traditional Japanese barbecue is left behind Raegan Klein and Alfredo Linares, at their street food stall in Los Angeles, in the US state of California RAEGAN KLEIN/Reproduction The story of the American Raegan Klein and the Mexican Alfredo Linares is very different from the Pérez couple in Missouri. They were fascinated when they opened a street food stall in Los Angeles, in the US state of California. Linares entered the United States without authorization at the age of 17 and spent more than two decades in the country. He made a career and became a chef at a haute cuisine restaurant. He and his wife thought it would be a good idea to open a traditional Japanese barbecue stand. They got financing and ventured into their own business. But the dream fell apart halfway. Klein was afraid that ICE agents would detain her husband and persuaded him to voluntarily go to Mexico. “If something happened to him, I would never be able to forgive myself,” says Klein from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where they currently live. “I was the instigator.” For Linares, leaving the United States, a country that had become his home, was very difficult. So much so that he shared a video on social media saying goodbye to California in tears. Klein and Linares now live in Puerto Vallarta, on Mexico’s Pacific Ocean coast. Kindly Raegan Klein “Today is my last day here in the United States,” he said. “After 20 years, it’s time to go.” The couple has lived in Mexico for about a year and says the experience has been a great challenge. Linares is Mexican, but he feels like a foreigner in the country he left behind when he was a teenager. The return was more difficult than they had imagined and, currently, the couple continues to face difficulties in finding work. They often regretted the decision they made as they were unable to generate a permanent source of income. But Klein remains convinced that it was necessary to leave the United States. Linares says that, even working as an independent chef, offering dinners for small groups, his income is not enough. And Klein, who doesn’t speak Spanish, has had trouble finding remote work. Despite the difficulties, they do not give up and their objective is very clear: to open a restaurant in Puerto Vallarta. What they lack is the initial investment. “We are looking for an investor,” says Klein. Getting financing will be the beginning of what they could call “the Mexican dream.” After all, the other — the “American dream” — is already behind us.

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