Migrants return to a Mexico transformed by drug cartels

U.S. deportees face risks in gang-controlled territory

- By Steve Fisher and Kate Linthicum

ENRIQUE CASTRO AFP/Getty Images

A MICHOACÁN official near vehicles targeted by organized crime in November.

Adrián Ramírez hadn't been to his hometown in western Mexico for more than two decades.

When he finally returned there early last year after being deported from the United States, he found the place transformed.

Ramírez remembered the town as vibrant. But the discotheque where he used to dance through the night in his 20s was gone. The bustling evening market, where locals gather for tacos, now empties out early. After 10 p.m., cartel members wielding military-grade weapons take control of the streets.

"It is no longer the same Mexico of my childhood," said Ramírez, 45, who asked to be identified by his middle and last name for security reasons. "There was more joy, more freedom. But that's not the case anymore."

Anyone returning to their hometown after decades away will note changes - old businesses close and new ones open, some people move away and others die. Adjusting to such shifts has long been part of the Mexican migrant experience.

But many of the tens of thousands of people who have been deported to Mexico by the Trump administration spent decades in the U.S. and are discovering their country also changed in more profound ways.

Criminal groups, better armed and better organized than in the past, now control about a third of Mexican territory, according to an analysis by the U.S. military. Gangs have branched out beyond drug trafficking to extort money from small businesses and dominate entire industries, such as the avocado and lime trade. In some regions criminals charge taxes on just about anything — tortillas and chicken, cigarettes and beer.