Full Coverage: Without a Country

A couple’s devotion bridged a 41-year age gap, but a U.S. official said their marriage couldn’t be real.

Ana and Gerardo’s devotion swayed many who doubted that a marriage with a 41-year age gap was real.

Desperate to get back home after more than a year in Mexico, a young deportee makes another perilous border crossing.

Luis Ernesto Rodriguez eyed the metal door as he waited for his little girls.

The once-grand El Hotel Centenario is now the decrepit El Hotel del Migrante Deportado — the Hotel of the Deported Migrant. It hosts a procession of lost souls.

Not even a church-run shelter is safe for migrants sent back to a dangerous region of Mexico by the United States. Viewed as rich targets, the deportees are vulnerable to kidnapping — and worse.

Thousands of U.S.-born children now live throughout Mexico as a result of deportation of a family member. Disoriented, they struggle in a society that views them with a mix of envy and pity.

Luis Luna, 20, was smuggled to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 3. He grew up, went to school, found jobs. Then the Washington state resident was deported after a cop pulled him over for a broken headlight. He hopes to return on the undercarriage of a boxcar.