I was an Illegal Immigrant in Mexico

I fell asleep on the way to Campeche. I woke up at an Immigration checkpoint to see two immigration officers checking passports and papers and ID’s. I got a little nervous of course because I didn’t have my papers in order (remember Nogales when I ditched out on my papers?). When the man in the green hat and the green vest  walked up to me and asked me for my papers I showed him my California ID hoping that would satisfy him. He looked at it awhile and asked me for my passport. I had a feeling things weren’t going to go my way. I took out my passport and gave it to him. He leafed through the pages looking for a stamp and didn’t find one.

“Where’s your stamp?”
“They didn’t give me a stamp when I crossed”

He made a tthht thht thht sound as she shook his head and looked at me very severely.

“Do you have your fmm document with you?”
“No. Which document is that? They didn’t give me anything when I crossed”

And I went on to explain myself and the story of how I crossed and played dumb – pretending I had no idea what the fmm form was, hoping he would let me go.

“You have to get off the bus”

Shiiiiiiit. My stomach and chest felt heavy as I grabbed my pack while all the passengers gawked at the scene. I walked off the bus looking at no one (wondering what the Colombian girl must’ve been thinking). Once I was off the bus I tried asking him if he could give me the form so I could pay for it there on the spot. The answer was no. I was going to be held there at the checkpoint. I watched my bus pull away and drive down the road while I stood between the two officers. Nothing like police officers but very official in white shirts with a Mexican immigration logo, and green hats, and pressed green brown pants and tired faces and not at all happy looking.

The immigration checkpoint was bathed in bright flood lights and there was a bunch of other officers sort of sitting around staring at me. There was also a police officer who came up and asked me questions out of curiosity and took a picture of my picture in my passport (for no official reason but to laugh at it back at the station with his friends).

They didn’t handcuff me or anything but asked me to step in the back of a van with fenced windows. I wasn’t taking it too hard at that point because I still held the hope that they would take me to a place where I could settle the business. I sat in the van, pack by my side, watching all the officers talk outside. Finally the two officers stepped in and we were in motion. I asked them where we were headed and they said we had to go to another checkpoint and then to an immigration station. Once we set off down the road I became nervous. It was a dark two lane road without much traffic. I was finally succumbing to the paranoia in the US – I thought I was gonna have my head chopped off down the road somewhere.

My head never got chopped off. We went to another checkpoint and picked up a van full of Guatemaltecos. I didn’t talk to any of them but they all looked at me curiously when they stepped into the back of the van. One grandpa looking man had a little girl with him. We headed in the opposite direction after that; drove for an hour, maybe more. All the Guatemaltecos eventually fell asleep but I stood awake watching the road, staring out the window.

We arrived at the immigration station in Tenosique, Tabasco, Mexico. A guard opened up the white gate – which was a row of fat white poles with narrow slots that a skinny person like me could’ve slid right through. The bus drove in and we all got out and walked through the station door.

There was a jail cell full of young women on my right side upon entering. Most of them were lying around, but there was a few (in their teens I think) with their faces pressed against the bars to watch us new arrivals. The young ones against the bars were immediately curious to see me and asked where I was from and how I ended up there. They laughed when I told them the story. “All of us are in jail for trying to go to the US, and you’re in jail because you’re trying to escape the US. It’s so backwards” They were nice girls and had a good spirit about them.

I took a seat against the guard’s cubicle in the middle of the room. I sat staring at a huge pile of bags in the corner (while the jail cell girls kept staring at me, smiling and shaking their heads in disbelief). All the bags and belongings of the people who had been captured. I saw two backpacking packs in the pile and thought it was curious. I looked up at a whiteboard on the wall which listed how many people from each country were locked up. It was something like forty people from Guatemala, forty from Honduras, five from El Salvador, five from Cuba, one from Nicaragua, one from Germany and two from France. Germany and France? Plus the backpacking packs in the corner? Some other travelers got themselves into some bullshit, I thought, and hopefully I wasn’t going to be alone in this.

An immigration official called me into a room and took down all my information, my fingerprints, my story, etc. It took something like twenty minutes and I was still asking if I could pay for the form and get outta there but I wasn’t having any luck. The immigration official who processed me told me he had no idea how long I’d be there and the gravity of the situation slowly started to sink in. After the van load of people I arrived with were processed we were all herded into a cell full of black sleep pads, blue blankets and sleeping bodies, it being something like 2 AM.

I watched the Guatemaltecos, who looked very unsure of what to do. I made eye contact with a few of them. There was no place for us all to sleep and our eyes communicated that. We weren’t given sleeping pads and we weren’t given blankets. I followed them into an adjoining room and watched them look around. I looked at the floor and it was littered with bodies. There wasn’t a spot to lay and I saw that the Guatemaltecos realized this as well. The adjoining room, the second one that we walked into, was darker and cold and the faces on the floor seemed hard – the energy about the room felt dark. I walked back into the first room. The energy was easier, calm and it was much warmer. I spotted the one guy who didn’t belong. The guy with a sleeping bag and light skin and greasy light brown hair. I spotted a little gap between two bodies somewhat close to the traveler and nestled myself in. It was an odd angle to sleep in and sleep didn’t come easy. I was in jail. I didn’t know when I’d be let free. I had no idea what the scene would be like when I woke up the next morning. No, sleep did not come easy.