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San Diego Episcopalian’s resource center supports deported veterans in Tijuana, Mexico

November 11, 2026

[Episcopal News Service] When Robert Vivar was deported to his birth country, Mexico, from the United States in 2002, he settled in Tijuana to stay just across the border from his family in southern California. While in Tijuana, where he lived for nearly 20 years, Vivar met fellow deportees, many of whom were U.S. veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction from their combat zone deployments.  Many non-U.S. citizen war veterans struggle when they leave the military to access the services they need to live with physical injuries and emotional trauma, and at the same time they face deportation.  “Instead of getting the help that they need, there’s a possibility that they’ll end up getting kicked out of the country,” Vivar, who though not a veteran himself is the father of a U.S. Air Force veteran, told Episcopal News Service. In 2016, Vivar opened the Unified U.S. Deported Veterans Resource Center in Tijuana to help deported veterans adjust to life in Mexico, while connecting them with lawyers to assist them with their repatriation cases. Coincidentally, Nov. 11, Veterans Day, marks five years since Vivar’s U.S. residency status was restored and he reunited with his family in California. The reunion didn’t mean leaving deported veterans behind. Vivar estimates that he and volunteers have served about 260 veterans over the last decade, some of whom have since returned to the United States after their legal status was restored.  The resource center helps deported veterans access their VA benefits from Mexico by working closely with an accredited agent to launch screenings and to forward documentation that the agent files with the VA. Most veterans are initially denied or given a low disability rating, which measures the severity of a veteran’s service-related medical or mental health condition. When that happens, the agent appeals until an approval or higher rating is granted. The higher the rating, the higher the compensation. Most newly deported veterans find the resource center through word of mouth and social media. Vivar and volunteers meet with them virtually or in person and help them find temporary housing, food, clothing and a job, often at an English-speaking call center. Deported U.S. veterans are vulnerable to discrimination in Mexico, according to Richard Avila, a deported U.S. Marine Corps veteran who hasn’t been back to the United States since 2011. A big incentive for volunteering at the resource center weekly, he said, is sticking together in support and solidarity.  “When you get deported, you most likely don’t know anything about [Mexico] and there’s no government agency that’ll help you out,” Avila told ENS. “You’re basically on your own out here, and that’s the worst part.”  Avila enlisted in the Marines when he was 17. He had no addiction or law enforcement issues until two years later when he was sent to a base in Okinawa, Japan, where fellow Marines introduced him to heroin and LSD. He quickly became addicted to heroin and his military career and life “spiraled out of control.” Then one day he got arrested for heroin possession. “It was either I go to court-martial or voluntarily discharge, so I took the other-than-honorable discharge option,” Avila said. Active-duty service members and veterans can access substance abuse and mental health services through TRICARE, command referral or the VA, though Avila said he was never offered any treatment before or after discharge. Avila, a Mexican citizen, continued his life in the United States “in and out of jail” for drug use until he was first deported in 1996. He returned and got re-deported several times and in 2004, while back in the U.S., he found help in Narcotics Anonymous. He’s abstained from drug use since then. After getting clean, Avila drove a semitruck until a random inspection at a weigh station pulled up his criminal record, resulting in his arrest and final deportation in 2011. His humanitarian parole application was rejected. Even though he was exposed to the “drugs that ruined my life” in the Marines, Avila still loves the U.S. military and would enlist again today if he could. “I owe permanent allegiance to the United States,” he said. The Unified U.S. Deported Veterans Resource Center is not a designated nonprofit, so Vivar and volunteers spend their own money on operating, rent and utility costs. Monthly donations come from churches in the Diocese of San Diego through the Rev. Robert Blessing, a supply priest based at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in La Mesa and St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in San Diego. Blessing is a retired U.S. Army chaplain who enters Tijuana every other week and in emergencies to offer deported veterans pastoral care. He began serving deported veterans after leading a funeral in California for a veteran who died from a heroin overdose in Mexico. “We did the service with honors from the VA up at my church and carried his ashes across the border. That was the first time he could come back in 20 years and be with wife and kids and grandkids. He died alone,” Blessing, who retired in 2018 as a colonel, told ENS. “To me, it’s outrageous that veterans, who’ve sacrificed for our country, can get kicked out for making mistakes or not getting the proper preventative care or treatment they needed in the first place.” Deported veterans often request Blessing’s pastoral care because “they can express their anger and their outrage and all their feelings with me, someone they can trust.” Although they aren’t in Tijuana this year for Veterans Day, Vivar and Blessing are thinking of the deported veterans throughout the day. Vivar is promoting the Unified U.S. Deported Veterans Resource Center at The Episcopal Church’s Nuevo Amanecer conference at Camp Allen in Navasota, Texas. “Every chance that I get to mention the resource center, I push it and try to garner support anywhere I can,” said Vivar, who also serves as the Diocese of San Diego’s immigration missioner and interim executive director of Comunidad […]