Deportees Take Refuge In Underground Border City

Living Underground

Hundreds of deported migrants, fearing detection and harassment by police and drug smugglers and unable to return to their homes, have sought refuge in below-ground makeshift dwellings in this Mexican border metropolis.

Around 200 migrants are living in about 30 "pocitos," tunnels up to 15 meters (50 feet) long and a meter deep that have been dug into the rain-softened earth along a section of the Tijuana River near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Some 100,000 people are sent back to Tijuana every year from the United States, making that area of Mexico the recipient of the largest number of deportees.

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