(RNS) — At least once a week, relief workers from Jesuit Refugee Service Mexico see a grim routine: Newly arrived deportees step off planes in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, near Mexico’s southern border, still wearing gray detention uniforms issued in the United States. Transported in handcuffs and stripped of their belongings, they are released onto the street with little more than the clothes they are wearing. Some appear confused. Many do not know where they are.
“People arrive with nothing — no money, no way to move and no network to help them,” said Karen Pérez, country director of Jesuit Refugee Service Mexico, or JRS-MX.
Her staff, which operates from three offices across Mexico, has shrunk from 70 to 28 people in the past year because of U.S. federal funding cuts to humanitarian aid, leaving the group struggling to meet the growing needs of deportees. Similar organizations across Latin America have also faced budget blows. Since January 2025, the Trump administration has dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), prompting a lawsuit from organizations such as Global Health Council and the Jewish refugee aid group HIAS seeking to restore funding. The legal battle continues.
JRS-MX’s budget in 2025 fell by nearly 40 percent, from 33 million Mexican pesos …