Deportados Unidos en la Lucha (Deportees United in the Struggle) is an organization based in Mexico City that works to connect Mexicans recently deported from the US. We had the opportunity to visit with Ana Laura Lopez, one of the main organizers in the collective, about DUL’s mission and what their work looks like.

Ana Laura Lopez had lived undocumented in the US for many years before her deportation. She spoke proudly of her life there both as a mother and as a leader of a union campaign with her undocumented women co-workers. However, Ana’s growing notoriety as an activist made her vulnerable to ICE, and ironically, as Ana attempted to return to Mexico in order to obtain legal US residence, she was detained in the airport and eventually deported. Now Ana cannot return to her life and children in the US for 20 or more years.

This traumatic experience encouraged Ana to start a collective to help recent deportees, and DUL was born. The collective of deportees started out selling candy, then quickly learned screenprinting to make bags and T-shirts for fundraising. Ana said that one of the missions of DUL is “to create people of change, and for people to understand their own power in activism.” New members of the collective are taught screenprinting skills, and also contribute their ideas for new designs.

The funds from DUL merchandise are used to support newly arrived deportees. Because of the harsh rhetoric of criminality around deportation used in the US, Ana explained that Mexicans can be somewhat wary of offering help to deportees. Therefore, many deportees are dropped in Mexico City without money, a place to stay, or a way to contact relatives. Deportados Unidos fills this gap by meeting deportees at the airport and providing solidarity as well as temporary shelter.

In the US, mainstream debates about immigration policy do not include the voices of those experiencing deportation and the pain of family separation. Deportados Unidos was a glimpse of the solutions that organizing can offer for people rejected by the system.