Lifestyle

Deported U.S. Veterans in Mexico Lack Access to Mental Health Care

By América Magazine / October 24, 2022

Through billboards, online testimonials, and stories from family friends, Tijuana advertises hope for medical accessibility to U.S. residents and the local population alike.  

BY MYLI SANGRIA

After Tijuana’s medical tourism boom, the binational corridor further intertwines the U.S. and Mexico’s cultures and economies.

Patients can now find themselves staring through Angeles Hospital’s high-rise windows and an old cathedral’s stained glass on the same day.

In its 2020 review, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized the various strategies migrants and U.S. immigrants use to compensate for their lack of health insurance or limited access to health services, including travels to border towns and, for patients originating from Mexico, trips back to their home cities.

In achieving mental health accessibility for deported U.S. veterans, Tijuana’s distinct windows shatter.

U.S. military recruitment tactics paint a grey area onto medical tourism’s framework. If you serve honorably within the U.S. armed forces for at least a year, you may be eligible to apply for naturalization. Of the 527,000 U.S. immigrant veterans in 2018, Mexico was the top country of birth at 92,000. 

The road to citizenship is paved with dead-ends. When breaking the law, citizen veterans receive far greater leniency.

Unlike citizen veterans, non-citizen veterans face both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the justice system. If convicted, non-citizens may be sentenced and jailed for their conviction before their removal proceedings. 

From 2013 to 2018, ICE deported 92 Veterans and issued removal for 250 Veterans.   

“Most of these convictions are mental health related,” said Robert Vivar, activist and co-director of the Unified U.S. Deported Veterans Resource Center. “After incurring all sorts of trauma from their military service, most veterans are not taught how to reintegrate into civilian life.”

Recent research finds that criminal involvement is 61% higher among veterans with PTSD. Such crimes may include self-medication with illicit drugs.

Contingent to such statistics, the VA expanded its eligibility criteria in 2017 for its emergency mental health coverage and found a dramatic increase in mental health services to other-than-honorable discharge veterans.

The department provided 12,000 mental health visits for former service members with “other-than-honorable discharges” in 2021, 270% more than in 2020. Still, these energies only fully crystallize on the U.S. side of the border because deported veterans lack mobility in making the most of their earned care.

Without access to a VA clinic, deported veterans in Mexico (and other regions) may attempt to navigate the VA’s complicated Foreign Medical Program to get reimbursed for care for service-connected conditions outside of the U.S.

The Foreign Medical Program strains its reach for two reasons.

Firstly, the reimbursement process may take more than six months. Veterans must still pay out-of-pocket.

Secondly, Mexico invested little in developing its mental-health infrastructure. WHO reported that the 2017 budget allocated for mental health was just over $1 per capita.

Entangled in their fights to attain mental health care and restore their lost identities, deported veterans have been left without solace for decades.

In recent years, despite the loneliness and stigmatization, veterans have rediscovered the ability to heal through a community-based approach. 

Like the dynamic portrait of Tijuana, deported veterans offer a series of narratives necessary to understand the unsung symbolism of the U.S. and Mexico’s migratory corridor. The Unified U.S. Deported Veterans Resource Center and other groups assist deported veterans in understanding the gravity of their perspectives and recognize avenues to improve their legal and medical mobility.

For instance, to continue supporting their veterans, the resource center, various activists, and volunteers with Psicólogos Sin Fronteras stand side-by-side. The collaborators arrange group-therapies and interventions whenever possible.

“For the care that we have been able to provide our deported veterans on special cases–seeking to apply for humanitarian parole to return to the United States–we provide them a diagnosis for PTSD by Psicólogos Sin Fronteras,” Vivar said.

Mental health care provisions also extend to asylees and displaced people, as their international mobility and mental health needs are critically muffled.  

Whether we are “stained” with dynamic histories or possess pasts clear as day, the windows through which we gain a sense of life are influenced by our mental states and general agency. Only through greater transparency can we understand the real significance of our improvements.

In picking up the pieces of our broken windows, we look out for one another. There is no brighter time than the present to reflect on who the other is.

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