After years in U.S., many return to find poverty, resentment, even discrimination.

Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico — After nearly seven years in the United States, 16-year-old Edgar Gutierrez was back in a hometown he hardly recognized.

He returned to relatives he couldn’t remember. Kids thought he was stuck up because he had lived in the United States. Teachers scolded him when he pronounced his name with an American accent. Edgar grew up in these mountains of central Mexico, but now he felt like a stranger.

Edgar and his family, who moved back after years in Atlanta, are among a fast-growing number of undocumented immigrants returning to Mexico to start over. Some are drawn by a desire to return to their roots after meeting their financial goals; many more are pushed by the faltering U.S. economy and tough local laws aimed at illegal immigrants.

But coming home, particularly in rural Mexico, they find the same grinding poverty that originally drove them out. Returning migrants face a gantlet of challenges, from finding a new job to reconnecting with family and friends.

But experts say the burden falls most heavily on the children, who spent their formative years in American schools, watching American TV, wearing American clothes and listening to American music.

They are returning to a homeland they know through stories and photos. Some speak no Spanish. Others speak both Spanish and English with an accent.

For most, the biggest challenge is adapting to a different educational system.

“What happens is, the kids stop studying because [the adjustment] becomes too hard and there is no one helping them,” said Arturo Lopez, who runs the municipal migrant aid office in Ecatepec, a sprawling suburb of Mexico City.

Edgar struggled at his new school in the state of Michoacan. His English teacher sent him to the principal’s office when he corrected her pronunciation. He couldn’t understand the Spanish terms in his science class, so he found translations on the Internet.

In the end the strain was too much. He quit school and spent his days in his new neighborhood of unfinished concrete homes and dirt streets. It was a long way away from Cross Keys High School in Atlanta, where he was in the Junior ROTC and 4-H Club and dreamed of joining the U.S. Navy.

Officials in states such as Michoacan and Zacatecas are warning of an impending flood of returnees.

“There’s no work for them [in the U.S.], so they figure it’s better to come back to their own country,” said Griselda Valencia Medina, the secretary of immigration for the state of Michoacan. “As bad as it is here, they at least have a place to live and to eat.”

In Obrajuelo, a village in Guanajuato state, Lourdes Perez has just arrived in her hometown after six years in Austin, Texas. Her 8-year-old daughter, who finished first grade at Odom Elementary in south Austin, is slowly coming out of shock. Her 6-year-old son keeps asking when they are going back.

Perez said she returned because it became increasingly hard to find work as an undocumented migrant. “It’s slow for everything — restaurants, construction, everything,” she said.

Perez feels a little shell-shocked herself, but she’s concentrating on enrolling her kids in school, something that’s turning into more of a bureaucratic nightmare than she expected.

Former migrants often return to find a system not inclined to help. Many are surprised to learn that U.S.-born children need an apostille, an international document similar to a notary stamp, for their birth certificates. Without the apostille, the Mexican school system will not enroll their children.

Parents say they face discrimination when they return.

Omar Martinez, 32, said school officials refused to enroll his 4-year-old son, who was born near Oakland, Calif., at a local kindergarten in Ecatepec.

“They said they don’t want foreigners,” he said. “They couldn’t explain it. They just said they didn’t want foreigners.”

Martinez and his brother, Ivan Martinez, moved their families back to Mexico during the summer, when their mother fell gravely ill. Both said they spent weeks trying to find schools that would accept their children, ages 4 to 13. They eventually found a welcome at Cinco de Mayo Elementary.

Patricia Cervantes, the school’s principal, said the school has taken in several migrant students over the past few years and strives to give the returnees extra attention. She said the school can do this because of its small class sizes — 25 kids per class compared with an average in Ecatepec of about 45.

“It’s our job to help them integrate into society,” Cervantes said.

But experts say the situation shows how ill-prepared most Mexican schools, as well as the government in general, are for the expected flow of returning migrants.

“The authorities know that the migrants are the ones that help the country the most [through sending money home],” said Lopez. “But then they don’t help them when they come back.”

In Michoacan, where about a quarter of the population has migrated to the United States, officials are scrambling to put together economic plans to deal with the potential return of thousands to rural areas.

Officials hope to help returning migrants set up small businesses and help parents with documents like the apostille. The hope is that rural areas can absorb the returnees without severe dislocation.

Back in Ciudad Hidalgo, Edgar, now 17, has decided to return to school. After initially being overwhelmed by the move to Mexico, he’s determined to make the most out of his new beginning.

He’s enjoying the freedom of being back in Mexico. Like many undocumented youths in the United States, he said he didn’t go out much, but now he attends dances and plays soccer until 11 p.m. with new friends and long- lost cousins.

And he’s traded the view from his Atlanta apartment — dumpsters and a parking lot — for a dramatic mountainside. He’s also reconnecting with grandparents who didn’t recognize him when he returned.

But Edgar still feels caught between two worlds.

“We’re getting used to it,” he said. “It’s like … a new life. Everything is new. New friends, new neighborhood. It’s hard to come back.”