Los Angeles — As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stepped up raids across Los Angeles in recent weeks, Julie Ear and her family made a difficult drive to Tijuana International Airport just south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Ear’s mother, Regina Higuera, had lived in the United States for 36 years. But on this particular morning in early June, she left her home, her children and grandchildren — all of whom are U.S. citizens — and headed back to her birthplace in Mexico.
“When the ICE raids started picking up on other states, we knew that we were going to get hit eventually,” Ear told CBS News. “Nobody’s safe.”
Since President Trump began his second term, ICE has arrested more than 100,000 people as of early June, according to internal government data obtained by CBS News. The Trump administration has also encouraged undocumented migrants to self-deport. Last month, it announced it would offer free airline tickets and a $1,000 incentive to some migrants who chose to leave the U.S. and return to their home countries on their own accord.
Ear said her mother chose to self-deport because “she wanted to make sure that she was in control of her life.”
“She didn’t like the uncertainty of somebody coming into her house, or her job, or being pulled over, and just telling her, ‘Oh, now you’re in Mexico,'” Ear said of her mother.
Higuera had crossed into the U.S. illegally when she was only 15 and went straight to work in Los Angeles’ garment factories, Ear said. She had intended to stay for just a period of time, earn enough money and then return to Mexico. But then she met her husband and started a family.
“She’s been contributing to the economy, paying taxes every year,” Ear said. “There’s no benefit for being undocumented, they don’t get benefits. She’s not going to get a pension. She doesn’t have a 401(k). She never got food stamps. She didn’t get welfare. People want to come here to work. And, you know, it’s not illegal to want to work.”
Now, recently reunited with her own mother in Guerrero, Mexico, Higuera said nearly everything outside of her new home is unfamiliar.
“I’m happy because I’m no longer stressed,” Higuera told CBS News from her new home in Mexico of her decision to leave the U.S. “But there are moments when I think about all of you [her family] and I get sad.”
The better life she worked to build in the U.S. is now being carried on by her children.
“That’s why I have such a strong daughter,” Higuera said of Ear. “From a very young age, I taught her, we have to be strong no matter what situation that we find ourselves in.”
Ear said she talks and texts with her mother daily.
“Sometimes I forget that she’s so far because we talk so much,” Ear said. “But then that is when the family thing happens, that’s when I’m like, ‘Oh my God, you’re actually gone. You’re not actually here.'”
