Jesús Cruz came to Los Angeles 33 years ago. He was sent back to Mexico and his wife faced an impossible decision. Should she and their children join him in Mexico? Or stay in Inglewood?

‘I want them to have a better life,’ Cruz says of his U.S.-born children. ‘Not the one I had.’

KINI, Mexico — On a hot June night Jesús Cruz at last returned to Kini, the small town in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula where he spent the first 17 years of his life.

His sister greeted him with tearful hugs. The next morning she took him to see their infirm mother, who whispered in his ear: “I didn’t think you’d ever come back.”

After decades away, Cruz was finally home.

Yet he was not home.

So much of what he loved was 3,000 miles away in Southern California, where he resided for 33 years until immigration

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