Julio Borrell landed in Florida in 1980, one of more than 100,000 Cubans who arrived that year during the Mariel boatlift. He was 26. Over the next 46 years he opened a repair shop, raised seven children born on American soil, and never missed an immigration check-in — until last December, when a routine appointment turned into an arrest. He spent roughly four months inside the Florida facility known as Alligator Alcatraz, was transferred to a processing site in Eloy, Arizona, then put on a nearly two-day bus ride south. He landed in Tapachula, a city on Mexico's border with Guatemala he says he'd never even heard of. The Atlantic recently chronicled his ordeal, reporting he was carried well over 1,100 miles from the nearest point to cross back into the U.S.
Now 72, Borrell survives by patching tires on Tapachula's streets, saving toward a room he can rent. He's the head of a family — seven children, eleven grandchildren, a great-grandchild — he now reaches only through a borrowed phone. On the street one day he ran into another face from Miami: a friend who'd held a green card and got deported anyway. He told his daughter he isn't giving up. "I won't die in Tapachula."
