Many immigrants leave after decades of illegal stay in the US.

In August 2021, more than three decades after sneaking across the southern border to work and support their families in Mexico as young adults,

Irma and Javier Hernández checked in at LaGuardia airport for a one-way trip from New York to Oaxaca.

They were leaving behind four American children, stable jobs where they were valued, and a country they had come to love.

Irma and Javier Hernández dance during the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of the town of Guadalupe de Cisneros in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

PhotoMarian Carrasquero for The New York Times

But after years living in the United States without legal status, the couple had decided it was time to return to their homeland.

Irma Hernández's mother was 91 years old and they feared that she would die before seeing each other again (as happened with Irma Hernández's father and in-laws).

With savings in dollars, they had built a small house, where they could live, and had invested in a tortilla shop, which they could manage.

Her children, now young adults, were able to fend for themselves.

“God only knows how hard we work day after day in New York,” said Irma Hernández, 57.

“We are still young enough to have been able to continue there, but in the end we made the difficult decision to return.”

The Hernandezes are part of a wave of immigrants who in recent years have left the United States and returned to their home countries, often after spending most of their lives working as laborers without legal status.

Some of them never intended to stay in the United States, but say the cost and danger of crossing the border kept them there once they arrived, and they built their lives.

Now middle-aged and still healthy, many are making a reverse migration.

Guadalupe de Cisneros in Oaxaca.

After years of living in the United States without legal status, the Hernandezes decided it was time to return to their homeland.

Photo Marian Carrasquero for The New York Times

Representing the largest and most transformative migration to the United States in modern history, Mexicans began a gradual return more than a decade ago, as the Mexican economy improved and employment opportunities in the United States dwindled over the past

. recession.

However, departures have increased in recent times, beginning with the crackdown

under the Trump administration and continuing under President

as many seniors decide they have achieved their original immigration goals and can afford the luxury of exchanging the often grueling job you are usually offered for a slower pace in your home country.

Mr. Hernández puts the corn dough into the tortilla machine at the couple's business.

Photo Marian Carrasquero for The New York Times

Their departures are one of many factors that have helped keep the total number of immigrants living in the country illegally relatively stable, despite the spate of

at the southern border, which reached two million last year. last year.

“It's a myth that everyone comes here and nobody leaves,” said Robert Warren, a visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies (a think tank), who wrote a recent report on this trend.

Mr. Hernández and his horse, Paloma, on the land where the couple keep animals and crops that they tend to in the afternoon after making the daily batches of tortillas.Photo Marian Carrasquero for The New York Times

“There are a lot of people leaving the country voluntarily,” said Warren, one of several demographers, including academics at Emory and Princeton Universities and the University of California, Los Angeles, who have documented this trend.

The current population of immigrants living in the United States illegally has remained

at about 10.2 million in recent years, after peaking at nearly 12 million in 2008, even with the large number of newcomers to the border.

Ms. Hernández took notes on sales with her son Steven, left, after the day's tortilla production.

Photo Marian Carrasquero for The New York Times

An emergency health order adopted to curb the transmission of the coronavirus allowed border authorities to quickly expel more than

new arrivals since 2020;

hundreds of thousands more have been allowed into the country during that period, but a largely voluntary exodus of other immigrants has kept global population numbers relatively stable, demographers say.

(While deportations accelerated under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, those numbers were too small to be a significant factor.)

The number of people living in the United States illegally, who emigrated from about a dozen countries, including

, fell 30 percent or more between 2010 and 2020.

The population of immigrants living in the United States illegally from Mexico, the main source of immigrants to the United States, dropped to 4.4 million from 6.6 million in that period.

During the decade, declines were recorded in all but two states, 49 percent in New York;

40 percent in California, which lost 815,000 Mexicans;

36 percent in Illinois;

and 20 percent, or 267,000, in Texas.

The data suggests that these residents were not moving to other states, but returning to their home countries, Warren said.

Mrs. Hernández outside the tortilla shop in Guadalupe de Cisneros.

"God only knows how hard we work day after day in New York," she said.

Photo .Marian Carrasquero for The New York Times

Illegal immigration has long experienced ups and downs.

People leave their country in response to push factors, such as economic hardship, drought, and escalating violence, as well as in response to attractive conditions in the United States, primarily employment and security.

The number of

immigrants living in the United States illegally halved between 2010 and 2019 due to improving conditions in Poland.

Brazilians

returned in large numbers when their country's economy was prosperous, thanks to a boom in food exports and successful bids to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, which spurred a boom in the economy

construction.

Rubén Hernández-León, a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who has conducted field research with Mexicans who have returned to their country, said the main reason people gave for leaving from the United States was the desire to reunite

Hernández-León said Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric, along with his administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, caused anxiety that also led some people living in the United States illegally, especially Mexicans, to leave.

“Most never wanted to stay.

We complicated everything when we militarized the border,” said Douglas S. Massey, a Princeton immigration expert.

“More and more they were staying longer and had families.”

Now, he said, census data suggests that many of them are

“If they have savings and a house in Mexico, they can retire there,” he said.

“Their children born in the United States are old enough to take care of themselves and can come and go to visit.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

look also

Hundreds of UK asylum-seeking children are missing

Venezuelan migrants: aid from South America is not enough, many continue on their way to the US.