Guadalupe Olivas Valencia was surrounded by cars and surveillance cameras as he made his last, desperate attempt to cross the border from Tijuana, Mexico, into the U.S. on Monday. Passing through the car lanes of the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the busiest land border crossing in the Western Hemisphere, his odds of making it past immigration authorities were slim.
Border officials soon stopped him. Unable to show legal documents to enter the U.S., Olivas Valencia was detained, and the following morning, deported. Less than an hour later, Olivas Valencia was seen on a bridge a few hundred feet away from the office where he was deported, throwing himself off it into the dry channel below. Witnesses told local media outlets that the man appeared to be in major distress, and could be heard shouting that he did not want to return to Mexico.
Tijuana police found the man shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday, responding to a 911 call of an apparent suicide, according to a report obtained by The Washington Post. Olivas Valencia, still alive, lay below the bridge, and next to his head was a plastic bag similar to the one U.S. immigration authorities give to deportees, filled with a change of clothes and food to survive the journey back to Mexico, Mexican media outlets reported.
He was transported to a hospital in grave condition, and minutes later, he died. His death was being investigated as a suicide by the Baja California Attorney General’s Office Wednesday, and quickly sparked anger on both sides of the border. Immigrant rights advocates used his story as an illustration of the sense of desperation and oppression felt by many undocumented immigrants, heightened further by President Donald Trump’s recent crackdown on deportations.
But it was far from the first time Olivas Valencia had been deported by immigration authorities. Olivas Valencia, who was about 44 years old and a native of Sinaloa, a violent Mexican state and stronghold of a major drug cartel, had been deported at least six times, according to information from the Department of Homeland Security.
Olivas Valencia was twice convicted of “illegal reentry” after deportation – classified as a felony – in 2005 at the Yuma County Adult Detention Facility and again in 2015, near the Mexican border in Casa Grande, Arizona. He served federal sentences for both convictions in Arizona and Texas – including a 16-month sentence for the latter case – and was deported after each, in 2007 and 2016.
Olivas Valencia had also served time in U.S. prison on other charges, according to documents in federal court in Arizona, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. One involved a 2001 conviction for marijuana possession after he was caught at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry with 128 pounds of marijuana concealed in his gas tank. In 2005, he was stopped in Arizona for “driving a stolen vehicle in tandem with another vehicle toward Mexico,” according to a court document. A search revealed “$8,750 beneath the passenger seat,” the document said.
The day before his death, Olivas Valencia had presented himself to U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the San Ysidro Port of Entry and, with no legal documents, “was found to be inadmissible,” according to a statement Wednesday from the Department of Homeland Security. “He was repatriated to Mexico on Feb. 21, 2017 and turned over to Mexican officials.”
He died of a heart attack and concussion, according to the BBC, after falling from the eight-meter-high bridge, which connects the Chaparral border crossing with the northern part of Tijuana, an area littered with bars, canteens and hotels. It is one of main roads for those being removed to Mexico, and was recently built for the passage of trucks from the Ruta Troncal, a new urban transport system, Mexican news outlets reported.
Despite Olivas Valencia’s numerous illegal reentry convictions and deportations, his family members painted a different picture of his life, calling him a humble, hard-working family man. He spent years working illegally as a gardener in California before being deported recently, the Los Angeles Times reported.
(c) 2017, The Washington Post
