Tijuana  - The double fence that separates Mexico from the United States near Tijuana is just a few hundred metres away from the Casa del Migrante - the migrant's house.

The white church of Father Luis Kendzierski, which sits on a hill and is visible from the city centre, is always surrounded by scores of people.

The men who approach the church have often lived and worked in the United States for up to 25 years before being picked up by police, taken before US immigration authorities and deported to Tijuana.

In the migrants' home there is accommodation for up to 400 men. They can stay there for 12 days and get food and clothing, as well as being enabled to phone their relatives in Mexico, to organize their forced trip home. And then they are taken home by bus.

"For most of them this is a catastrophe. They realize here that their dream is shattered," Father Kendzierski said. "After many years of work in the United States they return, not richer but older."

The United States is not only sealing its southern border with a fence in order to stem the inflow of Mexicans and Central Americans. They have also tightened legislation in order to send back Latinos who have already reached the United States illegally.

Hundreds of thousands of people are being sent back along the 3,000-kilometre-long border. And given that the "traditional" illegal gateways near cities have become insurmountable, migrants seek out more out-of-the-way places over dangerous, mountainous pathways into the United States.

In the first nine months of this year, some 97,000 Mexicans and Central Americans were arrested and sent back from the 120-kilometre stretch in Cochise County, Arizona alone.

"This is a lot more than last year," said Gustavo Morales Cirion, the Mexican "protection consul" in Douglas, Arizona, who is in charge of migrants.

In the whole Tucson sector the figure of returnees was as high as 266,000.

A wide range of people come together under Kendzierski's roof in Tijuana. However, they share similar lives: poverty and lack of prospects in southern Mexico, a dangerous, illegal way into the United States, many years of life and work with no rights - and deportation following a minor violation of the law.

There was Pablo, 26, from the southern Mexican state of Puebla. For eight years he earned 1,000 dollars per month as a construction worker in California without immigration papers, and he sent his family as much as he could. Given that he only ever worked with other Mexicans, he learnt no English.

He got caught because he jumped a red traffic light.

Or Victor, from Guatemala, who worked for 16 years for a security firm in Los Angeles - without documents. According to his own account, he was recently involved in a shooting, in which an attacker was killed. Victor was deported, not because he was involved in the death of a man, but because he was in the United States illegally. He does not want to return to Guatemala, and he is looking for work in Tijuana.

Juan, 19, arrived in the United States 18 years ago with his mother, when he was just 10 months old. He went to school despite being in the country illegally. His downfall was drinking a beer on the street and being caught by police.

Over the coming days, he was preparing to meet his grandparents for the first time. He was not sure when he will get to see his mother again.

Such histories repeat themselves thousands of times. Many illegal migrants remain in the United States undisturbed for years, because they are essential as a workforce.

In southern California, in San Diego, there are some 25,000 indigenous people from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Most of them are "indocumentados," without papers. But even though they daily face the threat of deportation, over the years they have let down their guard enough to flaunt the rules and celebrate their cultural festivals out in the open.

They need something festive to make up for their dangerous crossings into the US and their illegal labour in the tomato, avocado and strawberry fields around San Diego. US farm owners, faced with immigration crackdowns, say they don't know who will harvest their crops.

With more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the US today, most of them from Latin America, it's a similar story in US construction sites, hotels and many other vibrant branches of the economy. (dpa)