When we moved to San Ysidro almost two decades ago, I was acutely conscious of the Border Patrol station across the street from our apartment building. I wasn’t accustomed to seeing the green and white trucks in such numbers, and when they rumbled past, my heart pounded in momentary panic. My daughter and I had no reason to worry, but all my husband had in the way of paperwork was a letter from Immigration and Naturalization Services acknowledging receipt of his application for legal residency and a copy of our marriage license folded tightly in his wallet. Naively, I hoped this would be enough to stave off deportation if he were to be picked up by Border Patrol agents. Still, I begged him to stay out of 7-11 and go to the tiny Mexican market next to it, since agents often stopped at 7-11 for drinks and snacks before heading out to the hills for their shift.
One night, months after arriving, I was pulled over and cited for a burned-out taillight. As the officer wrote the ticket, two Border Patrol vehicles pulled up behind the patrol car. Although they asked me no questions, I was grateful that my husband wasn’t in the car with me and weak-kneed with relief when they drove off.
Now, 17 years later, my husband is a US citizen, and I rarely notice the ubiquitous Border Patrol trucks streaming through the intersection in front of my house at the beginning and end of each shift. We count among our friends several Customs and Border Patrol agents, people who I know to be honorable, well-intentioned people. We are among the fortunate ones who no longer have to worry.
However, as deportations return to the forefront of conversation, I’ve found myself in a state of intent alertness again.
Last school year, eight of my students — one fourth of the class — had a parent deported, and I had a front-row seat to their struggles either growing up without a mother or father, crossing the border frequently as they traveled between households, or surreptitiously living in Tijuana and crossing daily for school. Many lived in economic crisis.
I watch as former students who currently receive protection from deportation under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) scrambled to fill out paperwork and pay the $495 fee to renew their status before October 5, the final deadline for the last possible renewal. Young adults who had hoped to apply for DACA are left adrift by the cancellation of the program. They face deportation or a life in the shadows.
Equally alarming in my community is the shift from emphasis on deportation of those with serious criminal records to a broader target. Under President Trump’s executive order, undocumented immigrants with even a minor criminal record or standing immigration order, or even those charged with a crime but not convicted are now targets for deportation. This means that although ICE is on course for fewer deportations in 2017 than in 2016, the majority of those being deported are not the “bad hombres” of which President Trump spoke before the election, but rather people with no criminal history.
At first glance, this seems straightforward: of course people who are here illegally are targets for deportation. Why wouldn’t they be? It’s easy to ignore the collateral cost to families, children, and businesses when otherwise law-aiding citizens are being deported.
As news channels stream coverage of people who are being deported after decades of peaceful productive residence in the US, I observe CBP interactions with more trepidation. I remember my initial fear from years ago: fear of being stopped by “La Migra,” of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, of seeing my husband deported, of relocating or rebuilding my family. Now my anxiety is for others. Is the man standing handcuffed under the flashing lights of the Border Patrol truck the father of a student? Is he a friend, neighbor, or acquaintance? Whose life will be shaken by this apprehension? Which child will be raised fatherless? What family will have to decide between uprooting their US citizen children to a country they’ve never known or living without a parent? Who will face homelessness with the breadwinner gone?
It’s hard to fault the Border Patrol agents for doing their job, especially if it’s done with impeccable attention to the law and respectful consideration for the targets of their questioning. It’s harder still to look in the faces of families torn apart by deportation, and tell them that this is the best response we have.
The breadwinner needs to go back to his/her country of origin so they can take care of their family. And, you talk about a country they’ve never known…so, then keep all of them out of the USA, because according to you it’s a country they’ve never known.