From LA to Mexico City: The Emotional Journey of a 'Self-Deportee'
In the quiet Escandón neighborhood of Mexico City, Abel Ortiz recently experienced a moment that shook him to his core. Two American tourists were screaming at each other on the street below his apartment, their English curses cutting through the evening air. For Ortiz, who had lived in Los Angeles since he was two months old, the scene triggered a visceral reaction. "No, you don't get to do that!" he imagined shouting. "Not in my country!"
A Life Uprooted After 38 Years
This response surprised even Ortiz himself. Though Mexican by birth, he had spent only nine months total in Mexico before being brought to the United States by his parents seeking a better life. For 38 years, Los Angeles was his home—until Donald Trump's immigration policies made life unbearable for undocumented immigrants like him.
Last August, Ortiz packed two bags containing clothes and cherished photographs and left everything behind. He became what Trump administration officials call a "self-deportee"—someone who voluntarily leaves the country after being made to feel so unwelcome that departure seems the only option. Others describe it more accurately as being "ICEd out," referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's aggressive tactics.
The Painful Goodbye
Ortiz abandoned a thriving hair salon business he co-managed in Highland Park, LA, along with his best friend Regina and the community he had built over decades. He traveled overland to Tijuana, too afraid to risk LAX airport, before flying to Mexico City—a place he barely knew, where he speaks Spanish only haltingly.
"I've done the hardest thing I ever could," Ortiz confesses. "There are days when I feel literally insane with the duality of it."
Newfound Freedom and Deepening Grief
Since arriving in Mexico City, Ortiz has experienced both liberation and profound loss. As a Mexican citizen, he can now travel freely within the country, visiting beach towns like Puerto Escondido—something impossible during his undocumented years in the US. He no longer feels like an outsider looking over his shoulder for ICE agents.
"In LA there was always a part of me that was asking whether I belonged in a room," he reflects. "That has gone. In Mexico I'm surrounded by people with my own features. A part of my identity had been filled in. I feel lighter."
Yet the sadness of what he left behind weighs heavily. Ortiz now works at Dos Flamingos salon in the tourist-rich Roma district, earning a fraction of his previous income and no longer being his own boss. While he appreciates Mexico City's vibrant culture, legal recognition of gay marriage, and stunning jacaranda trees in purple bloom, he struggles with disorientation.
The Complicated Reality of 'Self-Deportation'
The concept of self-deportation contains a fundamental contradiction: being coerced into voluntary action. Ortiz left of his own volition, but only after fear made staying impossible. "I couldn't breathe in LA," he says simply.
Trump administration officials claim that since Trump's second inauguration, 2.2 million "illegal aliens have voluntarily self-deported," with more than 100,000 using the CBP Home App that offers undocumented people a one-way ticket home and a $2,600 "exit bonus." Immigration experts like Julia Gelatt of the Migration Policy Institute remain skeptical of these numbers, noting they appear inflated and based on questionable data.
Navigating Identity in a New-Old Home
Ortiz now faces daily reminders that he's not fully at home in either country. In Mexico City, his limited Spanish marks him as an "extranjero" (foreigner), while he misses the community he built over decades in LA. His best friend Regina hasn't returned his calls since October, angry at his departure.
"I'm grieving the life I had," Ortiz acknowledges. "Not crying-on-the-bathroom-floor type of grief, but still grief." He admits to feeling depressed and disoriented—what sociologists call "norteado," the disorientation experienced by returning migrants.
A Growing Resentment and Search for Self
As time passes, Ortiz finds his anger growing toward the country that was his home for 38 years. "It's vile, it's horrible," he says of Trump's immigration policies. "It's amazing what he's gotten away with, and it shows how racist America is."
He now recognizes how he kept his head down as an undocumented immigrant in LA, avoiding confrontation. Recently, when an American client questioned his styling techniques at Dos Flamingos, he calmly refused to serve her—a small act of assertion he hopes represents growth.
"I've made a decision that I don't want to hold on to my resentment towards white America," he says. "I don't want to become an angry old man."
Looking Forward While Processing the Past
Ortiz plans to travel to Barcelona in May to attend a Bad Bunny concert, then explore where life takes him next. While he has no regrets about leaving a country that made him feel unwelcome, he wrestles with fundamental questions about identity.
"The Abel that I was, I left that person behind in LA," he reflects. "So who is the Abel I want to become?"
His journey—captured in the Guardian documentary "Abel Leaves LA"—represents the human cost of immigration policies that prioritize statistics over people, and the complex emotional landscape of those caught between two worlds.
