ICE arrested him in S.F. after 29 years. He returned to a Mexico he no longer remembers. [View all]

by Annika Hom
August 1, 2025, 4:00 am



Rosa and Miguel Lopez at his father's home in Chimalhuacán in Mexico.


CHIMALHUACÁN, Mexico — Miguel Lopez will never forget his 47th birthday.

Maybe if the judge’s decision on his immigration case had landed in time, he would still be in Livermore. He’d probably come home from work at Wente Vineyards, and his wife Rosa, a U.S. citizen, would have a meal waiting.

Maybe their youngest of three children, Julian, would convince Lopez to get his favorite pineapple ice cream from Pleasanton. Maybe. If Lopez hadn’t been deported.

Instead, Lopez spent his 47th at his childhood home in Chimalhuacán, a municipality just outside of Mexico City’s eastern border. After 29 years away, Mexico wasn’t familiar, but foreign.

His dad’s house now had new floors and doors, partially bought thanks to money Lopez sent home. The mountain in the horizon, once natural, is now filled with new houses.

“It wasn’t how I imagined it,” Lopez said in Spanish during an interview at his father’s house. “You leave with the impression of how things were when you left. And you see everything’s different.”

More:
https://missionlocal.org/2025/08/miguel-lopez-returned-to-a-mexico-he-no-longer-remembers/