When I was 7, my family left Mexico City for Texas in search of safety and opportunity. It is a story so familiar that it is practically foundational — the idea that, however imperfect, the U.S. is a place where people from anywhere can start over safely. But since Trump came back into office last year, that promise has further eroded. The anti-immigrant rhetoric has ramped up so forcefully that ICE has been willing to kill American citizens in order to enact its agenda. The threats of mass deportations and violence are working: For the first time since the Great Depression, more people are leaving the U.S. than arriving. Among Gen Z and millennials, a new aspiration is taking hold. On social media, some are saying that the new American Dream is to leave for a better life.
Nowhere is that shift more evident than among undocumented immigrants who grew up in the United States. Brought here as children and raised as Americans, many are now making the life-altering decision to self-deport. Increasingly, younger Mexican deportees are choosing Mexico City.
Abel Ortiz, now 38, was two months old when his family immigrated to California. He never questioned his immigration status until 10th grade, when his friends began applying for their first jobs. That is when his dad had to sit him down to explain that they were undocumented. Without a Social Security card, Ortiz would have to find jobs that paid under the table, which were mostly at fast-food restaurants. Ortiz did that for a while, but at 25, he wanted more for himself, and his friend helped him get a job at a hair salon. As his reputation as a hairstylist grew in LA and his clientele became more high-profile, bigger opportunities came up, including offers of work in television. But his legal status kept those doors closed. With every step forward in his life and career, he hit a ceiling, a job he could not have because of who he was. “The feeling of seeing my friends travel and going forward in their lives as they got older, and feeling like I was not able to do any of that, kept getting heavier,” Ortiz says.
After Trump’s second term began and his anti-immigrant crackdown ramped up, the urgency to leave began to feel real. By June, when ICE was deployed across LA, Ortiz began spotting federal agents’ cars and locking the door of his salon, only letting in clients he recognized. Once home, he would sit in his car for a few minutes before going inside, just to make sure agents were not waiting outside to detain him. He describes living in a constant state of paranoia. “Going about my normal business started feeling so pointless,” he says.
That summer, he decided he could no longer live that way. He started watching vlogs on YouTube about Americans who had moved to Mexico City, while clients told him how much they loved visiting there. Little by little, the idea of leaving got easier to bear. In August 2025, Ortiz said an emotional goodbye to friends and family and crossed the border by way of Tijuana. Today, eight months since he first arrived, Ortiz lives in a two-bedroom apartment with a balcony that overlooks a beautiful tree-lined street. He is still adjusting, but overall, his life feels lighter. He found work at a salon in Condesa, an upscale neighborhood popular with foreigners.
For so long, being undocumented had been a major part of Ortiz’s identity. Now, he is beginning to explore who he is — and could become — as a person no longer defined by their legal status. Although he earns less than he did in the U.S., and there are still days that feel lonely, Ortiz does not regret coming. “My peace is worth so much more,” he says. “I am more in touch with my humanity. In the U.S., sometimes you feel like a robot. There is no time to sit and ponder. I feel more compassionate, less stuck in that ‘time is money’ mindset.” He is considering returning to school and pursuing a new career — because for the first time in his life, he can.
Last year, I got laid off from my 9-5 and came back to live in Mexico City for a few months. Spending time here, I finally understand many of the TikToks I had been seeing. As an immigrant in the U.S., I lived with a constant urge to prove my worth, particularly through accomplishments like degrees or prestigious jobs. Even when I felt like I was succeeding in all those aspects, I still felt stressed, both socially and financially. What I found when I came back to Mexico City was a place where I could afford to go to the dentist without health insurance and make friends more easily in a society that values community over endless hustling, where my job title did not make me more or less of a human. I also take better care of my appearance, because, for example, I can afford to get my hair cut more often.
That is how I met my barber, Erick López, 31, whose parents brought him to Chicago (where he was then raised) as an undocumented child. López also self-deported as a direct response to Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. When he was growing up, he felt unsafe even telling people where he was. As he got older, he began feeling like his immigration status made his world extremely small, and he wanted to travel beyond it. “I could not leave the country and come back; that was one of the biggest problems,” López tells me. “It felt like being trapped in a cage.”
The final straw came when Trump deployed ICE agents to Chicago. López compares the feeling of what ICE was doing in Chicago to kidnappings, with members of his community disappearing without any trace or knowledge of where they had been taken. Like Ortiz, López reached a breaking point. “I wanted to do something for myself, for my freedom, for my peace of mind,” he says. “For my sanity.”
López left Chicago for Mexico City in September 2025 and soon after got a job at a barber shop frequented by American tourists, where he had a competitive advantage because he spoke both Spanish and English. Then he began posting videos of his skin fades and the transformations he was giving his clients. Keep in mind, his style of cutting hair is unique in Mexico City, where barbershop culture — which comes from Black, Latino and Caribbean communities in U.S. cities — is just now becoming trendy. His videos went viral. He has turned into something of a celebrity barber, and now, his calendar is booked out weeks in advance. “I do not know if I would have been able to get as much reach in the U.S., because I am bringing something new that people have not experienced before,” he says.
But beyond the professional success he has found here, he has found something much more important: A sense of calm. “I definitely feel happier, I have my peace of mind,” López tells me. “I am just happy to finally be living how I am supposed to be living. Free.”
Ortiz, López, and perhaps I, too, are examples of the Americans who are starting to vote with their feet. For many whose families went to the U.S. in search of opportunity, the promise of America no longer resonates. What was once imagined as a place of possibility has, for some, become a place of limitation, fear and exhaustion.
“In the end, my decision to leave was political,” Ortiz says. “It was a decision to no longer give my time, energy, my life force, my money to the U.S. It was like leaving an unhappy marriage.”
For Ortiz and López, leaving was not just about escaping fear but about reclaiming agency for themselves. “You only get one life,” Ortiz says. “I did not want to spend mine in a country that does not care for me.”
