For roughly 100 days, Thomas says he faced harsh detention conditions, despite agreeing to deportation
Thomas, a 35-year-old tech worker and father of three from Ireland, came to West Virginia to visit his girlfriend last fall. It was one of many trips he had taken to the US, and he was authorized to travel under a visa waiver program that allows tourists to stay in the country for 90 days.
He had planned to return to Ireland in December, but was briefly unable to fly due to a health issue, his medical records show. He was only three days overdue to leave the US when an encounter with police landed him in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody.
From there, what should have been a minor incident became a nightmarish ordeal: he was detained by Ice in three different facilities, ultimately spending roughly 100 days behind bars with little understanding of why he was being held – or when he’d get out.
Yeah, never mind that the murder rate per 100k in Mexico is quadruple what it is in the “backwater” US (25.2 vs 6.3). It’s flawless and beautiful, and the US is just horrible and worse in every way than there and everywhere else, “shit”, as you said.
Wonder why so many people are trying to immigrate there, then, hm. Also, Mexico’s got more people trying to get out than get in, how strange.
Ah, what do all those people know, anyway? They’re just making the decision to completely uproot their lives and go to another country for fun, not because they’re desperate for a better life!
Please see my other comment about how the statistics can be misleading.
I am in no way saying that Mexico is utopia, they have their problems just like all countries do. Wealth inequality is a big problem. That doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t travel there though. If you are a traveler from outside of North America, no Mexican version of ICE is going to put you in Alligator Auschwitz.
Also, it is worth noting that many of the immigrants coming through Mexico are from South America, where there are even larger problems with poverty than in Mexico. Sure, plenty of Mexicans are coming too, but not all brown people are running from the same problem.