Soon after the plane lands, a luxury bus pulls up to the Center of Attention for the Returned Migrant (CAMR), and the deportees disembark. They are led into a big room with plastic chairs and bright blue walls, where they are given a cup of coffee and a fresh baleada, the traditional bean-filled tortilla of Honduras. They are greeted with the cheery words of a CAMR worker over the loudspeaker, “Bienvenidos” – Welcome to Honduras! Next, the worker proceeds to read off the names of people who have to pick up medicines or their box of personal belongings. The deportees sit and wait for their names, getting up periodically to get a glass of water, or chat amongst each other. One woman explains to the woman sitting next to her, “Wow, I haven´t had a baleada for three years!”
In the room at the front of the building, a family anxiously waits for their daughter to finish the paperwork and be able to leave with them. The grandmother wrings her hands, wondering if the webpage announcement about the day of the deportation was actually correct. The brother, who is waiting outside and has peeked into the room where the deportees are waiting, bangs on the glass door of the room excitedly. “I saw her, I saw her!” he exclaims.
Once the announcements and the distribution of personal belongings is complete, the deportees are led into the adjacent room where a team of volunteers, mostly Honduran university and high school students, helps each of them fill out a short form with basic questions about the circumstances of their deportations. Both the questions and answers are short and to the point. “Do you have children that you left behind in the US?” I ask one man from La Ceiba. “Yes, three,” he tells me. “What was the reason for your deportation?” I ask another man, from Tegucigalpa. “Well, they picked me up in the Greyhound bus station,” he says. And when I ask a third man, “How did US immigration authorities treat you?” He quickly exclaims, “Terribly, terribly!” Oh okay. On to the next question...
The line to get everyone registered and out the door is long. Today, 83 men and 11 women arrived on the plane, coming from detention centers in Florida. Three flights with approximately 100 people each arrive here to San Pedro Sula each week, and another three or four land weekly in the airport of Tegucigalpa. Last year, over 25,000 Hondurans were deported from the US. This makes up more than 1/15 of the 392,000 total immigrants sent to their home countries from the US last year. The numbers of total deportations has increased dramatically in the US in the past two years. However, it´s important to note that the majority of Hondurans who are deported have not been convicted of any crime. For every 1 Honduran who is sent to their home country with a criminal charge, 4.5 are deported on the grounds of unauthorized entry or their undocumented status.
After the volunteers finish registering all of the deportees, they are let out of the front room to reunite with their families that are waiting for them, make phone calls to try to get a ride, or wait for the bus that will take them to the bus terminal. One woman with corn rows calls repeatedly on the phone CAMR provides. No answer. She fiddles with the green striped bracelet on her hand – a souvenir from the detention facility. The men outside have already taken off their bracelets. One man pulls his hand out of his pocket and opens it to reveal some nickels and pennies left over from the journey. He takes a swig of his soda and throws them into the dry dirt.
I love how you describe the sense of lost hope in the last paragraph. "One man pulls his hand out of his pocket and opens it to reveal some nickels and pennies left over from the journey. He takes a swig of his soda and throws them into the dry dirt." It's a very powerful imagery.
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