By Sue Smith
When it comes to immigration and immigration law violations, there is no grace, no forgiveness, no way to fully pay one’s debt and make things right. Deportation or fear of deportation lurks just around the corner, not just for the migrants themselves, but also for their family members.
Take E, for example, a young man who came to the U.S. alone at age 12 to join his older sister. He had been abandoned by his parents and there was no one left in El Salvador to care for him. Life was hard and he made mistakes, particularly with alcohol use.
Fast forward about 25 years to today. While E now holds permanent residency status, his sister and her husband do not, and there are some alcohol-related charges on E’s record that have caused fear for E’s sister. E and his six-year-old son (the boy’s mother was recently deported) are no longer welcome in his sister’s home—not because of any charges or violations or history, but from the fear that ICE might target E for removal although he las legal status – and the sister and her husband might be discovered. Through sobs, E told us he and his son were living in his truck. “What am I going to do now? I just lost all my support systems, and I have to take care of my kid. I’m all he has.”
J was stopped recently while driving because he was driving “after sunset without headlights.” For most cars today, headlights come on automatically, so it seems the officer might have been “fishing.” J’s car is on a list of vehicles that have been driven by persons without a valid operator’s license. Officers looking for undocumented migrants will often look for reasons to make routine traffic stops to determine if the driver has legal status or not.
J received asylum and now has legal permanent residency, but still struggles with PTSD as well as severe anxiety and clinical depression. Encounters with police terrify him. As a single father of two sons, ages 11 and 10, he relies heavily on his domestic partner to help with childcare as well as contributing to the rent. But she recently moved out. With a deportation order on her file, she didn’t want to place J and the boys in danger if ICE officials came knocking on the door, even though J and his sons have legal status through asylum.
Both of these men struggle with the long-term effects of trauma and simply want to live a peaceful life here in the U.S. E was just a child when he came to the U.S. looking for his family. Had he remained in El Salvador, he would have become a street kid, with no choice but to become part of a gang for survival.
J was a businessman in Honduras when he was targeted by gangs for failure to pay extortion fees. His family barely escaped with their lives when gang members stormed and shot up their home. As a teen, he experienced torture from both the police, who accused him of being a gang member, and from gangs, who tried to force him to join a gang.
Both of these men want their sons to have a different life from the one they had in Central America. They want safety, security, honest work, a roof over their heads, friends and a sense of belonging. And yet, they’re immigrants. Despite having legal status, holding jobs, doing everything right and abiding by the laws of the U.S., they’re still immigrants. They can’t change the color of their skin or their accent. They can’t “forget” Spanish. They can’t take back the mistakes they’ve made in their lives. You can’t determine someone’s legal status based on their external characteristics.
And they can’t change the fact that, under the current situation in the U.S. today, with or without legal status, they and their families are targets for immigration enforcement.