Most morn­ings, Oscar Con­tr­eras Car­ril­lo takes two trains and a rick­ety bus, called a pesero, across Mex­i­co City to man­age a food truck. He gets one day off each week. Oth­er­wise, he’s work­ing 11- and 13-hour shifts, serv­ing sand­wich­es, tacos and glass­es of hor­cha­ta, a sweet rice drink. His month­ly income hov­ers at $430.

Two years after his arrival, Contreras still feels like a "guest" in Mexico. There are myriad cultural gaps left to fill.

Noth­ing about this sit­u­a­tion resem­bles his life three years ago.

Con­tr­eras, now 30, was liv­ing in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia in 2009, mak­ing between $30,000 and $40,000 a year as a con­struc­tion safe­ty direc­tor. He paid for his sister’s col­lege class­es and rent for the apart­ment they shared with their moth­er, he says.

Then he was arrest­ed on charges of dri­ving with a sus­pend­ed license and pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na (the lat­ter charge was dropped, accord­ing to Con­tr­eras), and author­i­ties dis­cov­ered he was an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant from Mex­i­co. Con­tr­eras — who had lived in the U.S. since he was about 7, had been edu­cat­ed in Amer­i­can schools, and had long since for­got­ten his native Span­ish — was deport­ed rough­ly a week lat­er. He says he agreed to leave vol­un­tar­i­ly rather than fight his case because ICE offi­cers told him it would be a ​“waste of time.”

Con­tr­eras isn’t alone. Depor­ta­tions have sky­rock­et­ed under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, ris­ing from rough­ly 190,000 annu­al­ly a decade ago to 400,000 today. Between 2005 and 2010, 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple left the U.S. for Mex­i­co; many depart­ed vol­un­tar­i­ly, but ​“a sig­nif­i­cant minor­i­ty were deport­ed,” accord­ing to the Pew His­pan­ic Center.

Although state immi­gra­tion laws like those in Ari­zona and Alaba­ma have grabbed head­lines, the fed­er­al Secure Com­mu­ni­ties pro­gram has also been incred­i­bly pow­er­ful, accord­ing to Sean Rior­dan, an attor­ney at the San Diego ACLU. The pro­gram requires the fin­ger­prints of every per­son booked by police be reviewed for immi­gra­tion vio­la­tions against a Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty database.

That oblig­a­tion can be abused, says Rior­dan. ​“If you have an offi­cer that, for per­son­al rea­sons, believes that undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants are a prob­lem in the com­mu­ni­ty,” he says, then the immi­gra­tion check is an extra ​“induce­ment” to arrest some­one sus­pect­ed of being undocumented.

As for Con­tr­eras, he wasn’t quite ready to aban­don the life he had built in Cal­i­for­nia. Author­i­ties caught him try­ing to cross the bor­der with a real U.S. pass­port he bought in Tijua­na, accord­ing to the com­plaint filed against him. He pled guilty to false state­ments to a fed­er­al offi­cer and served rough­ly 13 months in prison. Once freed, a bus dropped Con­tr­eras off in Coahuila, a Mex­i­can state that bor­ders Texas. In 10 years, he thought, he could apply for a visa to return — even if just as a tourist.

For the time being, he need­ed to estab­lish a life for him­self in Mexico.

******

It’s hard to know how many peo­ple are like Con­tr­eras, cul­tur­al­ly Amer­i­can and reject­ed from the only coun­try they’ve ever known. In Mex­i­co, I’ve met sev­er­al peo­ple who fit this pro­file who now can’t return to the Unit­ed States. One, a wait­er work­ing near Puer­to Val­lar­ta, had tat­tooed his for­mer Dal­las area code on his chest.

On June 15, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma announced new rules to allow young, undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants to avoid depor­ta­tion and obtain two-year work per­mits. The new pol­i­cy will apply to indi­vid­u­als age 30 and younger who came to the U.S. before turn­ing 16, have lived here for at least five years and have clean crim­i­nal records. They must also meet cer­tain edu­ca­tion require­ments or be hon­or­ably dis­charged veterans.

Obama’s action echoes the Dream Act, nation­al leg­is­la­tion that pro­vides a path to cit­i­zen­ship for young, undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants meet­ing sim­i­lar pre­req­ui­sites, which was blocked by Repub­li­cans in the Sen­ate in 2010.

The mea­sure is meant to be a ​“tem­po­rary stop­gap” with no oppor­tu­ni­ty for cit­i­zen­ship, Oba­ma said. But its ben­e­fi­cia­ries will be able to launch their careers and live with­out fear of depor­ta­tion. ​“They are Amer­i­cans in their heart, in their minds, in every sin­gle way but one: On paper,” the pres­i­dent said.

******

Con­tr­eras’ expe­ri­ence shows what hap­pens when these state­less peo­ple are forced to return to a strange coun­try. Adapt­ing is a daunt­ing and treach­er­ous process.

When Con­tr­eras was dropped off near the bor­der after his release from prison, he was afraid. ​“I was hear­ing the car­tels were recruit­ing peo­ple like me,” he says, ​“and because nobody else was going to give me job, I [thought that I] had no oth­er choice but to work for a cartel.”

Instead, his strug­gles were more mun­dane. He imme­di­ate­ly moved to Ira­pu­a­to, Gua­na­ju­a­to, where his father lived, and began look­ing for a job. Back in the Unit­ed States, he had worked his way up the lad­der at his con­struc­tion gig. He didn’t want to accept just any bot­tom-tier posi­tion, but he had no proof of his education.

At one point he inquired about a front desk posi­tion at a Hol­i­day Inn, fig­ur­ing that he’d shine work­ing with for­eign tourists. The hir­ing man­ag­er said his Span­ish wasn’t strong enough and offered him a serv­er job instead. Insult­ed, Con­tr­eras declined. ​“I prob­a­bly could have stayed and proven to them that I could do it, that I could do some­thing, but I was upset,” he says.

In late 2010, Con­tr­eras decid­ed to move to Mex­i­co City, think­ing he could earn a bet­ter salary there. He moved in with a rel­a­tive who had also lived in the Unit­ed States, but who had returned to Mex­i­co as a teenager.

When Con­tr­eras arrived in Mex­i­co City, he yearned to estab­lish a busi­ness — maybe a bat­ting cage or a restau­rant with activ­i­ties, like Shakey’s Piz­za Par­lor or Chuck E. Cheese’s.

“You’re so des­per­ate to achieve that you don’t even know where to start,” his rel­a­tive told him. She advised him to pick a goal and stick to it. He wasn’t going to get a mil­lion oppor­tu­ni­ties, like back in Cal­i­for­nia. ​“Stop liv­ing in Dis­ney­land because we’re not in the Unit­ed States,” she said.

He need­ed to save mon­ey. At first, he worked at a restau­rant and event hall that paid min­i­mum wage, less than $5 a day. Then he loaded corn at the Cen­tral de Abas­to, Mex­i­co City’s colos­sal whole­sale mar­ket. The mon­ey was bet­ter, but there was no upward mobil­i­ty, no room for ambi­tion. He moved on.

******

Two years after his arrival, Con­tr­eras says he still feels like a ​“guest” in Mex­i­co. There are myr­i­ad cul­tur­al gaps left to fill. Peo­ple see his tat­toos as poten­tial gang sym­bols. He doesn’t know the nation­al anthem. Crime is a dai­ly fact of life. His Span­ish has improved con­sid­er­ably, but he still con­fus­es words, like simio (ape) and sis­mo (earth­quake), which a co-work­er recent­ly chuck­led over.

Despite his depor­ta­tion, Con­tr­eras dis­cuss­es the Unit­ed States long­ing­ly, not bit­ter­ly. He miss­es his fam­i­ly and his old way of life — ​”every­thing,” he says.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Con­tr­eras even pines for U.S. law enforce­ment. In Mex­i­co, ​“you can dri­ve drunk and you can just give a cop, you know, 50 pesos and he’ll leave you alone,” he says. U.S. police are ​“respectable,” he adds. ​“I mean … for the most part, they do their job.”

Even­tu­al­ly, Con­tr­eras found his cur­rent posi­tion, man­ag­ing a food truck. It’s a pop­u­lar spot, sell­ing cochini­ta pibil, a slow-roast­ed pork dish from the Yucatan Penin­su­la. Con­tr­eras has pushed the own­er to inno­vate. For exam­ple, he con­vinced her to print a spe­cial note­book for wait­ers, so the orders are tak­en uni­form­ly. He also encour­aged her to think about fran­chis­es, and they’re cur­rent­ly work­ing on installing a stand at the Cen­tral de Abas­to. Con­tr­eras hopes the expan­sion can con­tin­ue. ​“It’s not hap­pen­ing as fast as we’d like for it to hap­pen, but it’s def­i­nite­ly mov­ing for­ward,” he says.

Nev­er­the­less, he has a back­up plan. On his days off, he’s tak­ing Mex­i­can aca­d­e­m­ic equiv­a­len­cy tests to show future employ­ers. He’s passed all the ele­men­tary school lev­el tests, and as of late May was con­sid­er­ing a six-month break from work to focus on the mid­dle school-lev­el exams.

“I’m think­ing that just every­thing that I know, every­thing that I’ve acquired from the States, it kind of favors me,” he says. ​“I just got to make it work.”