One Woodburn man opts to go home to Mexico on his own terms

Luis Lamas stood outside the airport drop-off terminal in Eugene. He unloaded three heavy suitcases from the back of his friend’s car, and a tan backpack with an American flag patch.

He’d packed the few belongings he’d accumulated: new sweaters and pants he had bought recently, after wearing the same thrift store clothes for over almost five years.

He also took with him books a friend had given him about the history of Aztec civilization and the Spanish conquest of Mexico, a coffee mug, letters from friends and an ex-partner, and his college diploma he’d taken with him from Mexico just in case.

Lamas was choosing to leave the United States at a moment, politically, when the Trump administration has made immigration a centerpiece policy. The administration is vowing to deport millions of immigrants without legal status, whether they have a criminal record, or not.

But while the administration’s crackdown on immigration played a role in his decision, it’s more complicated than that. In some ways, he felt trapped, Lamas said.

Coming to the U.S. in search of work

Lamas is a Mexican citizen who came to the U.S. with a friend after he was laid off from a job and had trouble finding another one. He had worked at a construction company for years as a project manager. He’d traveled all around Mexico overseeing public infrastructure projects.

“Then came the pandemic,” he said. ”All business went down, there was no economy.”

Lamas, who is divorced, left behind two kids, a home, a community — and arrived in California by plane in 2021, looking for economic opportunity. He entered on a temporary tourist visa, which he overstayed.

He worked physically demanding jobs, trekking up mountains to plant pine seedlings after forest wildfires and pruning almond trees in the San Joaquin Valley of California. He’d never felt that kind of pain before, working in the cold long enough that his nose and ears would start hurting. He didn’t have the right clothes, he said.

“And I’d fall behind the rest of the crew,” he said. “I’d be all the way back and a friend would have to come back for me, because he had more experience and could help me.”

In between shifts on some jobs, he would sleep in closets or cheap motel rooms with crews of half a dozen other men.

About eight months after he landed in California, Lamas followed a crew to Woodburn, Oregon, to work in nurseries across the Willamette Valley. He pruned overgrown trees, repotted plants and loaded them into trucks. He rode to jobs in vans with the rest of the crew. They were like an outsourced workforce, he said, because they weren’t directly employed by the nursery owners.

A few months into the job he had to stop, he said, because it wasn’t safe when they’d hit the road to go to the nurseries.

“The vans weren’t roadworthy, nor were they insured. It was risky,” he said. “We almost got into an accident, twice.”

When he stopped working at the nurseries, Lamas decided to put down roots in Woodburn.

It’s where he lived the longest during his time in the United States, where he found refuge and where he made friends. It’s also where he became a familiar face in a downtown where many of the businesses are Latino-owned, most store fronts have Spanish signs on their windows. And it’s where he came to own and run a coffee shop he’d bought with an ex-partner, Café La Onda.

From his coffee stand, Lamas would chat with customers about their fears and the unknowns. He had even more of those conversations after Donald Trump was elected last year.

Now Lamas is leaving that behind.

Donald Trump vows to deport millions of immigrants

A few days before he headed to the airport to leave the United States, Lamas sat on the back porch of the Woodburn house where he was renting a room. He had considered staying in the U.S., he said.

“I thought about it for a moment,” he said. “I said, ‘Well, I’ll stay here.’ But when you start living more here in the United States, getting to know more of it, I said, no, it’s not for me.”

Listen to Luis Lamas discuss his decision to leave the United States.

When Trump took office, the president stayed true to his promise to detain and deport immigrants without legal status.

He emphasized arrests of people with criminal records, but some people without any criminal history have also been caught in the crosshairs of the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement efforts. In Oregon, federal officials have arrested at least four asylum seekers outside a Portland courtroom after hearings involving their case.

The president has sent mixed signals on enforcement in industries like agriculture and hospitality. He ordered a pause on workplace raids in farms and the hospitality industry, but later federal immigration officials targeted meat packing houses in the Midwest and farms in southern California.

He has promised to ramp up arrests in Democrat-controlled cities like Los Angeles and Portland.

The administration is also running a multi-million dollar campaign to encourage people to self-deport. The federal government is offering to pay immigrants for a return ticket to their home country and a $1,000 stipend. Lamas did not accept the federal government’s stipend when he decided to leave.

As part of the campaign, the administration has produced a series of videos with dramatic music and cinematic shoots with a sole message: Leave now, or we will find you, and arrest you. The ads have reportedly played on online streaming services and on television.

All of that was in Lamas’ head when he decided to return to Mexico.

“I don’t want to find out if they’re going to put me in a detention center,” he said. “Or if I’m going to live so many more years [here] and be told, ‘You know what, no, you have to go back to your country.’ No, it’s a waste of time.”

Juliet Stumpf, a professor of immigration law at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, said that when people do decide to accept the Trump administration’s offer, they put themselves on record as being removed or leaving the United States.

“I think there’s also probably an unofficial self-deportation,” she said. “People who are saying, ‘It’s too hard to stay here in the United States, even if I have a potential option to stay or reasons that I might want to stay… but it’s not worth it to me to stay if I’m at risk of arrest, detention, deportation, losing my liberty,’ Whether or not that arrest, detention or deportation is lawful.”

That was a risk Lamas did not want to take. But that’s not all that went into his decision to leave, he said.

“If I’m here, it’s because I’m surviving right now and learning, and I need to use that time to grow as a person,” he said. “Many people come to the United States and say they’re here to make money. The truth is, you don’t get rich in the United States. It’s a process.”

He said the Trump administration’s crackdown was the push he needed after realizing he’d likely not be able to visit his family in Mexico. And in some ways, he said, his time in America had run its course.

“Along with Trump coming in, I said, ‘No, why am I exposing myself?’” he said. “I’ll go back home, take with me what I’ve earned, and that’s it.”

Perhaps, he said, the U.S. is not the land of opportunity it’s made out to be.

An American dream that never was

The morning of his flight to Mexico, Lamas held tightly to his phone, waiting to get a text from his ride to the airport, and his other hand held his coffee.

He brought up a quote attributed to Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz: “Pobre México, tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de Estados Unidos” — “Poor Mexico, so far away from God and so close to the United States.”

It’s a quote many Mexicans know, and refers to the tangled history between the U.S. and Mexico.

“Mexico has more advantages because it’s so close to the United States,” Lamas said. “But really, it’s more of a curse than an advantage. Why? Because as a country and as people, they don’t even treat us well. They really don’t treat us well here.”

Part of it too, he said, he didn’t really have much of an American dream to begin with.

“Honestly, I never thought about it because my life was good in Mexico,” he said. “My salary wasn’t great, but it gave me enough to live in Mexico.”

‘A privilege to return’

Lamas knows, though, leaving the United States isn’t the same for everyone. He knows some people who leave do not have much to lose, and others have built deep ties they do not want to break.

Some people might have to leave family, or jobs or they might be embedded in their communities, said Stumpf, the professor of immigration law.

“Maybe they’re the people that as a society, we don’t want [them to have] to make that choice,” Stumpf said. “We don’t want parents to leave their children. We don’t want spouses to leave their spouses, and we don’t want people who are important to the community to, to choose to leave that community or to have to leave that community feel like they have to in order to be safe.”

Lamas says in some ways, he’s lucky.

“For me, it’s a privilege to return to Mexico,” he said. “Because not everyone can do it. …Anyone can do it, but maybe not with the ease I’ll come back to.”

Time to go

At the Eugene airport, it was time to go.

Lamas turned to Salvador Gasca, a friend he’s known for almost as long as he lived in Oregon, and embraced him to say goodbye.

“Take care of yourself. God bless you. It’s all legitimate, right? Live life, it’s better to live it,” Gasca said as he gave Lamas a strong pat on the back. “You have my number if anything happens. We’re going to stay in touch.”

Lamas nodded, and thanked his friend.

“We’ll talk later either way,” Gasca told him.

Lamas’ hands shook, both from nerves and a lack of sleep after toasting goodbye with friends until late the night before. He picked up his luggage and made his way toward airport security to begin his journey — back to his home country of Mexico and an end to a nearly five-year stint in America.

Lamas would be returning to a house he’d rented out while he was away, to job offers from old colleagues, and to his family.

But, he said, what he was taking with him was more than just money. His nearly five years in the U.S. are a moment, like all others, he said, that he’ll hold on to.

He won’t miss the loud noise the coffee grinder at his cafe made, or when people wanted to gossip while they where waiting for their order.

“I think the most that I’ll miss is my friends, everything they gave me,” he said. “You know, you make your life, you fall in love with the people, with the place. Woodburn is just one of the best places I’ve lived in. Of course I’ll miss it.”

After months of planning and a two hour flight Lamas finally landed in San Diego. A friend picked him up from the airport, and they drove across the border to Tijuana. He decided to spend the night before taking another flight to his home state of Colima.

That night, he ate a cut of carne asada. Some of the best meat he’d eaten since being away.

Now in Mexico, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do yet. He’s still getting settled. He’s already thinking he’ll open a coffee shop. Like the one he had in Oregon.

This story was written and reported by Alejandro Figueroa, edited by Michelle Wiley and Courtney Sherwood, digitally produced by John Hill, with photos and visual editing by Kristyna Wentz-Graff. Jeff Thompson voiced English translations in the audio version of this story.

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