INTRODUCTION

The unprecedented and precipitous rise of immigrant deportations from the United States has persisted as a topic of political and media intrigue as well as scrutiny for nearly a decade (^{Gonzalez-Barrera, & Krogstad, 2014}; ^{Simanski, 2014}). As the largest single source country of immigrants to the United States, particularly unauthorized, Mexico represents the largest share of deportees –approximately 62% of deportations in 2015– (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2015). Deported migrants, involuntarily returned via a formal removal process, now account for a disproportionate share of returnees in Mexico (^{Masferrer, & Roberts, 2012}; ^{Massey, Durand, & Pren, 2015}), the majority of whom are working-age, adult males (91% aged 20-49 and 7% female). Recent socio-political actions have led to an increasingly diverse deportee population both demographically and in terms of their needs upon return (^{Suárez & Cárdenas Alaminos, 2019}; ^{TRAC Immigration, 2014}).

The arrival of deportees, commonly at one of Mexico’s 15 key repatriation points, brings numerous challenges to both deportees and the receiving border cities. It also raises questions about deportees’ basic needs regarding how and who will meet them. On the institutional level,⁴ the Mexican government at the federal, state, and local levels has primarily focused on formalized initiatives for particular subpopulations which provide specific information to deportees (for background see ^{Instituto Nacional de Migración, 2016}, ²⁰²¹; ^{O'Boyle, 2017}; ^{Suárez & Cárdenas Alaminos, 2019}). Emergent research suggests that the Mexican Government’s initiatives lack planning, support, and funding (^{Alanís Enciso, 2015}; ^{López, 2017}; ^{Suárez & Cárdenas Alaminos, 2019}). In the absence of funding and programming, scholars emphasize the fundamental presence of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) (^{López, 2017}; ^{París Pombo, Buenrostro Mercado, & Pérez Duperou, 2017}; ^{París Pombo, 2010}). The NGOs are frequently deportees’ primary contact for support, service provision, and integration.

Sizeable works of literature in public affairs, nonprofit management, sociology, and economics broadly theorize about and assess the existence of NGOs operating adjacent to governments, particularly when governments are unable to fully address groups’ needs (^{Clark, 1993}; ^{Coston, 1998}; ^{Ruben, Van Houte, & Davids, 2009}; ^{Salomon & Toepler, 2015}; ^{Scholten & Penninx, 2016}; ^{Young, 2000}). Adjacent literature has also analyzed the hybrid nature of NGOs, which frequently span many fields or serve multiple missions, including service provision, value promotion, and mutual aid (^{Chikoto & Halicki, 2013}; ^{Hasenfeld & Gidron, 2005}). They also operate as hybrids (^{Smith, 2014}) or organizations combining elements of volunteer-run organizations, social movements, and traditional nonprofit service providers.

Here we extend the literature on nonprofits to assess whether the NGOs serving deportees in Mexico (hereafter called migrant-serving NGOs (MSNGOs)) contribute to public value. The idea of public value, stemming from public administration literature, was conceptualized originally to explain the tangible and intangible contributions that the public sector (i.e., most frequently the government) makes to benefit public goods (^{Mendel, 2013}). Recently scholars have empirically demonstrated, using case studies, that nonprofit organizations contribute substantially to public value through their actions (^{Mendel, 2013}). Here, we build on the work of scholars, such as ^{Suárez and Cárdenas Alaminos (2019)}, who analyzed Mexico’s federal government policies and programs for deportees, and ^{Pombo et al. (2018)}, who analyzed MSNGOs in Tijuana through mixed methods, in-depth interview, and survey data collected. Additionally, we are guided by the criteria used by ^{Moulton and Eckerd (2012)} to evaluate a nonprofit’s contribution to public value (described in further detail below).

Building off prior literature, we evaluate the extent to which MSNGOs promote public value in Tijuana, Mexico. This helps to understand better the role of MSNGOs in serving deportees, an at- risk population reliant on others for support to rebuild their lives, making them a vital focus in MSNGOs’ contribution to public value. Public value promotes the benefits to migrants’ successful reintegration into society.

LITERATURE REVIEW

DATA AND METHODS

We aim to investigate the role of MSNGOs in creating public value using data collected from interviews, surveys, and field observations with MSNGOs in Tijuana in July of 2016. To supplement this information, we incorporate published data on Mexican Government programs and summary results from Encuesta sobre Migración en la Frontera Norte de México (^{EMIF- Norte, 2020}).

The initial step of the MSNGO data collection was to identify the organizations serving migrants, regardless of the services provided. To locate MSNGOs in Tijuana, the project’s primary investigator (PI) used social media and mainstream news reports, Mexican Government web pages, internet-based searches, and published scholarly articles. The search yielded a list of all known non-profit and social service organizations serving deportees in Tijuana, 30 organizations in total.⁶ Using this as the universe of migrant-serving organizations, the authors contacted all 30 organizations on the list via email or telephone in the spring of 2016 using publicly available information.⁷

We employed a standardized and approved recruitment script outlining the study’s purpose and procedures to request participation. The primary criteria for inclusion in the study was that the organization provided at least one service (e.g., help with finding work, housing, or resources) to deported migrants in Tijuana. If the organization reported that part of its operating mission involved providing services or support to deportees, we requested their participation. The PI’s Institutional Review Board approved all components of the study. All participants were asked to provide their verbal consent to participate, and we gave them a copy of the bilingual consent form. No monetary compensation was provided to participants. For confidentiality reasons, we only identify the MSNGOs and not the directors of the respective MSNGOs by name. We name the MSNGOs to provide historical documentation of these institutions and facilitate future research and data collections.

The data collection took place in July 2016 in Tijuana at each MSNGO’s physical location.⁸ The director or most senior-level administrator of each MSNGO (n=15) participated in a short survey lasting approximately 20 minutes, while semi-structured in-person interviews lasted about one hour. They included questions on the organizational structure, services provided, factors related to how deportees locate the organization, and general characteristics of the populations served. Surveys were administered electronically on an iPad using RedCap (Research Electronic Data Capture), a secure, web-based encrypted application provided by Vanderbilt University. Surveys and interviews were conducted in Spanish or English, depending on the respondent’s preference. The interviews were recorded using a digital audio recorder and then transcribed and translated (if necessary) verbatim by three undergraduate students and verified by the research team. The coding took place in two stages. First, the interviews were coded inductively after careful reading and analysis of the transcripts. Then, deductive codes were generated from the literature in the fields of organizations, migration, and nonprofits. Both coding processes inform the analysis. Quantitative results come from the 15 surveys which were analyzed in Stata 14.0.

FINDINGS

Table 2 describes the general characteristics of the 15 interviewed MSNGOs. While some of the MSNGOs have had a long-standing presence in Tijuana (e.g., Salvation Army-1957 or Casa del Migrante-1987), six others were established within five years of the survey date (i.e., since 2011). Furthermore, the MSNGOs interviewed were split in terms of whether they were established exclusively to serve deportees or migrants flowing north or south more generally. MSNGO directors often specified their target population in terms of gender, age, and vulnerability (i.e., addiction, poverty). Unsurprisingly, almost one-half of the organizations are located within ten minutes of the Mexico-U.S. border.⁹ The MSNGOs self-reported on the wide range of services provided from food and housing to health care, employment, and religious services. The MSNGOs varied in terms of the scale with six organizations serving less than 100 clients, six serving between 100 and 300, and the remaining serving several thousand. These results closely mirror the findings by ^{París Pombo et al. (2018)} regarding the MSNGOs in Tijuana.

Table 3 provides a summary of descriptive characteristics of the populations helped by the MSNGOs. Not all directors provided information for each indicator; therefore, we provide summary information and the number of responses for each item. A majority of the MSNGOs currently focus their service provision on deportees, who are primarily men. Most MSNGO directors reported that most of the deportees they serve are between 20 and 40 years of age, have a secondary level education, and had extended durations of residence in the United States before deportation.

The MSNGO directors also provided insight into their operating budgets, funding sources, workforce, and operational needs (Table 4). The average monthly budgets for the majority of the MSNGOs (9 out of 15) were modest —spending less than 5,000 USD per month—. Four of the MSNGOs had sizeable operating budgets above 10,000 USD per month and the remaining 11 had operating budgets less than 10,000 USD per month. Notably, only two organizations reported receiving financial support from governmental agencies, while the remaining 13 MSNGOs did not report any governmental monetary support. Also noticeable is that the MSNGOs rely on charitable donations, philanthropy, and unpaid volunteers to sustain their organizations. The majority of MSNGOs reported economic need as the primary challenge they face in operating their organization.

Subsequently, we turn to the analysis of how MSNGOs provide public value through the six roles discussed previously. Table 5 provides direct quotations from MSNGO directors related to each role. The qualitative data in Table 5 provides evidence consistent with the idea that the MSNGOs contribute to public value across many roles in Tijuana.

During the interview, in addition to the survey data summarized in Table 2 regarding the services MSNGOs provide, directors discussed their organization’s service delivery. They ranged from the Salvation Army Shelter for women and children to Madre Asunta and La Roca, almost unanimously stating that their organizations address basic needs such as providing food and shelter. The director of La Roca shelter captured the base level of need his group aims to satisfy: “They are given study, food, everything. Everything needed to be good people, right?” (La Roca del Alfarero director, personal communication, July 26, 2016).

The MSNGO directors also discussed their role in assisting deportees to obtain documents and identification. In Mexico, deportees who lack identity documents face exclusion from institutions, resources, and services (i.e., housing, jobs, schooling, and health care). In essence, government documents and identification provided deportees legitimacy in their country of origin. The director of Madre Asunta emphasized the importance of obtaining documents: “Well, if you can get documented, if you can get your birth certificate, your credential you can get a job and you can lift yourself up” (Madre Asunta director, personal communication, July 27, 2016). Despite the necessity of proper Mexican identification, many deportees are unable to independently navigate Mexican bureaucracies, which further their reliance on MSNGO’s guidance. Unprompted, several directors showed the interviewers numerous binders of birth certificates and other documents they had helped deportees acquire.

The MSNGOs also contribute to public value by innovating their services and/or delivery to address social problems that migrants and deportees face. An overarching theme about innovation was that MSNGOs spoke about services beyond meeting a deportees’ basic needs. Instead, they are seen and served as whole people. This ranged from the Salvation Army men’s shelter opening a dorm just for deportees to banking services at the Casa del Migrante and providing psychological services at the Salvation Army women’s shelter. Several shelters, including the Jehovah shelter and La Roca, developed programs to serve deportees with drug addictions.

Several MSNGO directors spoke of how their organization contributed to public value through advocacy. This was simply stated by the director of the organization Madre Asunta who described their mission as “Fully humanitarian. Yes. It is always in the defense of human rights of migrants, and the process to create public policies that support the processes of migrants” (Madre Asunta director, personal communication, July 27, 2016). In addition to serving the needs of vulnerable deported women and other migrants, Madre Asunta used their position to influence public policy about the human rights of migrants, particularly making women and their children their focal service population. On the other hand, organizations such as DREAMers Moms took a different approach to influence public policy. To provide legal services, they hired attorneys and then used it as a training opportunity so that members could then provide that service to others. The attorney also,

Teaches us how to fill out paperwork, how to take the digital sheets, how to ask for records. So, for us it is like a training that we are doing so that fellow deportees don’t pay $500 for a lawyer because they ask for records (DREAMers Moms director, personal communication, July 25, 2016).

Providing this service is consistent with the idea of generating public value, which legitimizes the presence of deportees in Mexico.

The MSNGO Ministerios Fronterizos Iglesia del Faro is a collaborative effort between a U.S.- based church and a sister church in Tijuana. Each Sunday, these two groups gathered to hold a church service/vigil in Friendship Park at the U.S.-Mexico border. This weekly service is a way for deported family members to connect with their loved ones while providing the MSNGO an outlet for their advocacy. In being present at the border each week, the MSNGO directors said they “continue to be a presence for border patrol, to show that the space is necessary. To show that the space is demanded to be open” (Ministerios Fronterizos Iglesia del Faro director, personal communication, July 25, 2016).

Regardless of their religious affiliation, numerous directors spoke of how their MSNGO contributed to public value through their expression of values and commitment to their faith. In the words of both the directors of Desayunador Salesiano “Padre Chava” and the men’s Salvation Army, they stated that the organizations were able to be the hands and feet of God. Additionally, the directors of La Roca del Alfarero, Roca de Salvación, and DREAMer Moms spoke of hope in what is possible for the lives of deportees in Tijuana and expressed their values related to hope and companionship.

Not all the directors expressed how their MSNGO contributed to public value in terms of community building. However, there were those that did spoke about connections between organizations. For instance, if they do not provide the required service, such connections may link deportees to other organizations (Casa del Migrante) or broader communities in which the MSNGO is located (Juventud 2000). DREAMer Moms was most vocal about their efforts at community building by stating,

To schools, churches, to talk to more civil associations and explain that you have to receive the deportee with kindness, because in fact we already come suffering, because we are separated from our families, because our future and what we had, what we worked so many years for is lost, and we reach our own country, and feel rejected by our own countrymen. We are going to schools, to high schools, where we are giving talks explaining why we are here, why we went, because many people think that we abandoned or betrayed our country, and after we’ve already been tossed, and we want to insert ourselves into society (DREAMer Moms’ director, personal communication, July 25, 2016).

Finally, the MSNGOs also discussed their contributions to public value in terms of citizen engagement. For many of the MSNGOs, citizen engagement took the form of advertising or social media campaigns to facilitate public education about the needs and hardships of deportees. DREAMer Moms are active on many media platforms, including radio and social media. Other groups use the internet to provide awareness. For example, the director of La Roca del Alfarero said,

Well, we can say that we try to —we use the internet to try, not so much publicity, but rather make people, people who do not know the situation— people who live here in Tijuana who don’t know what the situation experienced by the deportee. Or the person who sometimes doesn’t have a living, a support. Then we try to use the internet for that end, to see what they are doing here in Tijuana. And there’s a lot of need but little desire of people to help or work for it (La Roca del Alfarero director, personal communication, July 26, 2016).

DISCUSSION

In the past decade, U.S. immigration enforcement and policies have become more restrictive, and deportations of Mexican immigrants with a long U.S. duration of residence have risen dramatically (^{Gonzalez-Barrera & Krogstad, 2014}). Consequently, deportation is shaping the Mexican border city of Tijuana, a primary repatriation portal (^{Masferrer & Roberts, 2012}). Such border cities are confronted with the challenge of absorbing deportees, albeit sometimes only temporarily. To our knowledge, there is scant scholarly research on the role of nonprofits contributing to public value, particularly in Mexico. Therefore, we contribute to the literature examining MSNGOs in Tijuana, Mexico. Our analysis suggests they contribute to public value organizations by providing services, innovating their service delivery, advocating for the human rights and presence of deportees, expressing their faith values, building community, and fostering citizen engagement.

While many of the organizations interviewed offer an array of services, assisting with the necessities of housing and food was central to their mission. Directing deportees to access identification documents is imperative towards legitimizing their presence in Mexico. After deportees’ basic needs were satisfied, the MSNGOs could turn towards facilitating integration to a life many deportees did not want or expect. We found evidence to suggest that while MSNGOs respond to deportees’ needs, they are also working to reconstruct meaning, advance, and advocate for broader changes and awareness. The MSNGOs also focused on raising awareness about the deportee population and their right to access services. Likewise, nonprofits in the United States legitimize the deservingness of Hispanic immigrants and their “ability to claim rights and benefits in the local arena” (^{Gast & Okamoto, 2016, p. 2}). Arguably, what underlies this dimension is a desire on behalf of the MSNGOs to validate the presence of deportees, acknowledge the humanity and desperation, and harness their potential, beyond the stereotypes, as productive individuals who can integrate in Mexican society.

While this paper provides a foundation for future studies of organization and the dynamics of U.S.-Mexico border cities receiving deportees, there are several limitations. First, the pilot nature of the data collection limited both the scope of questions asked to MSNGO directors and the number of organizations included in the study. Nevertheless, we made great efforts to interview both large and established NGOs as well as smaller and newer NGOs, as evident by Table 2.

Second, the data is limited to MSNGOs and included only one quasi-governmental organization. Future data collections could incorporate directors of the Mexican Government’s official programs. By including government agencies and officials in the data collection, researchers could then ask whether the government-level response in Tijuana is comparable to other border cities receiving deportees. Researchers could ask whether a weak government-level response is a way in which the Mexican Government “offloads insoluble problems (e.g., the alleviation of poverty) that would otherwise threaten its legitimacy” (^{DiMaggio & Anheier, 1990, p. 152}) onto MSNGOs. Thus, the Mexican Government may use MSNGOs as safety valves for deportees and border communities who can adequately address needs without governmental assistance or financing. On the other hand, the Mexican Government may lack the resources or capacity to support the MSNGOs or their deportee initiatives. Because of shifting the responsibility of aiding deportees onto MSNGOs, the Mexican Government may unintentionally undermine its authority. As ^{DiMaggio and Anheier (1990)} suggest, (over)-reliance on NGOs may indicate that the government lacks legitimacy and may allow for NGOs to compete with the government.

Third, while Tijuana may be like other repatriation point-border cities, it may differ in unknowable ways. As a historical city of internal and circular migrants, there is greater awareness of the deportee population and its needs, thus creating an environment that encourages the growth of MSNGOs. Moreover, local, state, and/or federal governments may be operating differently in Tijuana in comparison to other repatriation border cities like Laredo. Future research should include other border cities and a broader range of non-governmental, civic, and public organizations.

The data collected from MSNGO directors highlights the immense needs and challenges of serving deportees in Tijuana and the tremendous effort MSNGOs are making on this front. Though it was beyond the scope of this pilot collection to survey deportees directly. Infrequently investigated, studies demonstrate that deportees’ lack of integration is associated with high-risk behaviors, homelessness, common mental disorders (CMDs), and poorer self-rated physical health (^{Bojorquez et al., 2015}; ^{Fernández-Niño, Ramírez-Valdés, Cerecero-Garcia, & Bojorquez- Chapela, 2014}; ^{Horyniak, Pinedo, Burgos, & Ojeda, 2016}; ^{Ojeda et al., 2011}; ^{Velasco et al., 2013}; ^{Wheatley, 2011}). Whether a cause or consequence of the difficulties of adjusting to the country of origin, the psychological, physical, and social implications for deportees are clear. While MSNGOs aim to promote well-being and integration, further research could inform the specific needs and support structures that may help deportees.

Deportees who were, and remain, embedded in the United States through family and friends may intend to re-migrate and see their time in Tijuana and Mexico more generally as temporary (^{Hagan, Eschbach, & Rodriguez, 2008}; ^{Velasco et al., 2013}). This may have implications such as the types of support and resources deportees need and seek out or how willing or able deportees are to re-integrate in Mexico and their needs. Focusing on the organizational level, this study demonstrates the needs and vulnerabilities deportees face in Mexico as well as the role of nongovernmental organizations. Additional studies are needed to investigate how changes in migration patterns and immigration policies transform border communities and the interactions between the Mexican Government and Mexican civil society.