Amid a surge in raids and forced deportations by federal immigration agents, a South Los Angeles mother deported herself last week to Mexico after living in the U.S. for 36 years, according to her family.
The woman’s daughter, Julia Ear, recorded the entire experience and posted the video on TikTok. The family drove from Los Angeles to Tijuana on June 7 while demonstrators were taking to the streets in downtown L.A. to protest the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and ongoing raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Ear told CBS News that her mother, Regina Higuera, 51, chose to self-deport after seeing the increase in immigration raids and deciding that she didn’t want to be deported against her will.
“She made this decision out of fear,” Ear said.
While fear is a motivator for some, the Trump administration has also offered undocumented immigrants $1,000 if they return to their home country voluntarily. Anyone who uses the the Customs and Border Protection Home Mobile App to inform the government that they plan to return home, the department said, would receive a $1,000 payment after their return is confirmed by the government. It is unclear how many people have taken advantage of this program.
Higuera’s family drove her to the airport in Tijuana, where she took a flight to Mexico City and then drove five hours to Guerrero state, where she plans on retiring.
“With my mom’s complicated legal status, she decided to do this in her own terms,” Ear says in the TikTok video. “She has no criminal record and is a hardworking taxpayer who has been working 12-hour shifts since she was 15, six days out of the week.”
Higuera first moved to the U.S. when she was 15 and hadn’t seen her mother in 22 years, Ear says in the video. Along with her children, she left behind three grandchildren in the U.S. Her husband was planning to join her in Mexico in a few months.
“She asked me not to cry, to let her go in peace, to take care of myself and not to trust all of these new people I’m meeting,” Ear says in the video.
As of early June, around 51,000 undocumented migrants were in ICE custody, the highest number since September 2019.
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