Whose Child is This?

Whose Child is This?

This is a story that my friend told me.  A couple (one American and one Mexican) had a 18 month old child.  They lived together and planned to marry, then he was picked up for traffic violations and eventually deported.  She couldn’t live alone and released her parental rights to the state.  The child was placed with foster parents who wanted to adopt her.  The father objected and wanted custody of the child.  The child welfare system is still trying to decide in which country the child belongs.

Today I saw a child whose story is so strange that it doesn’t sound true.  I have written of Ricardo who was deported because of traffic violations.  He had one four year old child by an imperfect woman.  The maternal grandmother in Mexico was terminally ill so mother and child went to be with her.  Mother decided to stay in Mexico but the child who is an American citizen was to be raised by Ricardo.  Then he was deported and is now in Mexico.  However, he became depressed and has employment where he is required to work long hours six days a week for little money.  Neither parent felt that they could raise this child at this time so they sent her to the United States to be with her half sister. Her half sister is 21 and is married with a two year old daughter.  However, after the ticket was bought for the trip to the United States, the brother-in-law was picked up by immigration for traffic violations and Y. was a single parent with many bills.  She decided that she could not take her half sister.  This child is now with another 17 year old half sister who works full time and lives with friends.  This child is now 5 but has not been to pre-school.  The school in Mexico would not take her because she was a U.S. citizen and because of budget cuts, the schools in the U.S. were full when she arrived here.  This child has two countries and no countries, many parents and no parents.

A Missing Employee

I just talked with someone who took a new job that had been filled by someone who was deported for traffic offenses.  I am sure that our government would prefer that a citizen had been hired; this was not the case.  Why won’t Americans take these jobs in restaurants?  They don’t fit into the American dream.  They don’t lead to future wealth.  One can work hard doing dishes forever at minimum wage and there are few rewards and no future benefits.  Americans will only get depressed by them.  Immigrants on the other hand are glad to get any job.  They will send money to families at home and live better than they ever have. 
This restaurant owner is barely making money.  He sends people home if there are no customers.  Between meals there is often no job.  No one gets two days in a row off or receives benefits.  The pay is hourly and the hours vary with the number of customers.  One works when business is good which may be two hours on, three hours off, and two hours on – the work hours are unpredictable.  Still this undocumented person was glad to get the job.  I am reading articles now that say fewer people are crossing the border to work in the United States.  The latest was in the April 9, issue of the Christian Science Monitor Weekly.  I wonder if there will always be people to take these kinds of jobs and if this restaurant will survive.  It may not be part of a Secure Community even though I enjoy eating there.  ICE deportations may be killing small businesses like this.

Noami and Juan.

Noami and Juan.

I have known Noami since the week that she crossed the border with friends at age 19.  She was always very independent and conquered the challenge of a new culture and status.  She very quickly acquired a job in a local restaurant and has worked every day and sometimes nights since.  She learned English and we talked much about the role of women and families.  When I see her, I often think of the phrase that “women need men like a fish needs a bicycle”.  She worked hard and soon became a manager at the restaurant.  She bought her own trailer and painted it throughout.  She bought her own car and taught herself how to drive.  She has never been stopped for a traffic offense.  After a few years, she had her first baby boy whom she cared for with the help of friends.  She refused any kind of social service help.  When he was six she went on vacation and four months later those around her realized that she was pregnant again.  When the baby was several months old, I babysat for him while she worked.  She indicated that a friend of hers would pick him up.  I was surprised when a handsome male I didn’t know showed up and the baby was delighted to see him.  His bond with the baby was very clear.  I questioned Noami later and learned that Juan was the father of baby George.  She had no feelings for him but he had moved over 200 miles to be near his baby.  He has no other relatives in the United States.  He insists on seeing the child on a regular basis and does help support him.  Noami has several night shifts on her job and eventually let him babysit while she was gone.  Then Juan got picked up by the police for driving without a license or insurance and was picked up by ICE.  Noami was very upset and immediately figured out where he was and began to bond with other women whose husbands were being held.  I had never seen her so upset.  Several weeks later the three men were released from a county jail (ICE had rented space) without bond but all are to have immigration hearings in one year.  This couple is now together.  ICE has helped baby George and his big brother have a family.  Noami knows that that could be undone at the next hearing, especially if immigration needs detainees for immigration centers or needs to deport more people for their own statistics.

romeo and julie

Romeo  and Julie

My con tact with this family has been intermittent.  I first heard of Julie when I was talking with her brother and learned that his 17 year old sister was in the process of crossing the border.  The coyote who was driving undocumented people to our state had called him and asked him to speak to his sister so that she would stop crying.  The fear was that immigration  representatives would be suspicious of a young girl who continued to cry.  It seemed natural to me that a 17 year old who was leaving a home in rural Mexico, perhaps forever, would cry.  A few years later, I visited her in the hospital where she had given birth to a son.  She had formed a liaison with an urban  Hispanic which did not work out.  As the child started kindergarten, I began  to see her with Romeo.  I saw them often in the park where the bus stopped.  They were always running and playing and often holding hands.  Their love for each other was clear.  Then one day I drove by Romeo’s house and realized that someone had painted his car orange with two black strips.  I mentioned this to a relative and was told that no one drove the car except in emergencies.  Several months later, he needed to go to work after the busses quit running, drove the car, and was picked up by law enforcement for a traffic violation.  He was referred to immigration.  On the day immigration picked him  up, Julie took her last $50 and sent a money order to the jail where he was to be held.  This shy woman contacted everyone she knew in the community who had had any contact with ICE.  Several weeks later, Romeo was released without bail although an immigration hearing was scheduled next year.  Julie’s entire family drove the two hours to pick him up.  The Secure Community program has saved the community from orange cars.  I do fear the future hearing.  This is a young man who is single and has not been in the country long; he technically has no family in the U.S.  I wonder if legal marriage would help him?

Roberto 2.

Roberto 2.

Roberto is in a county jail.  An immigration judge has set his bond at $3500.  His family set out immediately to raise that money; Roberto does not want to go back to Mexico.  He also needed extra money to exist in the county jail.  He called his cousin and gave her the address.  Jails vary in the way inmates receive money;  this one wanted postal money orders.  In this state inmates need money.  The greatest need is for underwear.  The person enters jail with only one pair and is not given another one.  They need to buy additional sets if clothes are ever to be washed.  This week the family has raised the needed bond money.  I called the Chicago immigration office for them.  I kept pushing buttons until I was talking to a real officer who could help me.  This is the first time I wasn’t talking to a machine and the officer was even polite.  He gave me a direct number – give that man a raise.  We were to call 24 hours before we wanted Roberto and the agency would transfer him to Chicago.  The family has to arrive early with money and identification indicating that someone is a citizen.  It takes two hours to type the necessary forms to let someone out on bond.  I hope that this doesn’t backfire for the family. 

Roberto

Roberto.

Roberto has been picked up by ICE and is in a county jail near Chicago.  It is not clear to me whether this is good or bad.  Roberto is from an indigenous group in rural western Mexico.  The group is close and poor.  They are descended from Aztecs but have developed their own culture and language.  They live in a beautiful mountainous region with a shortage of productive farmland.  They have a long history of traveling north to work temporarily, saving money, and then returning to the group until the money runs out.  It is expected that their young men will travel to the United States or other parts of Mexico temporarily.  Their Catholic Church has a yearly ceremony to bless the men who are working elsewhere.  A tighter border has made this more difficult and some men, like Roberto, have not returned to families in Mexico.

The main work area in the United  States has been New York City where 9 or 10 men live together in a high rent apartment.   Some men from Mexico move in and others return home.  Roberto was part of that population until he joined a group that traveled to the Mid-west where they tended to establish community ties and start new families.  There are seven members of this group in our community and three of them have married outside the group and started families.

Roberto occupied a trailer which was abandoned by his cousin and other members of the group stayed with him.  From New York Roberto brought a positive work record and recreation that focused on alcohol.  He quickly established a positive work reputation in our community and became an assistant night manager in a restaurant.  His days off were spent with alcohol.  Gradually alcohol took over his life, he left his job, was charged with a DUI, and was summoned to numerous court appearances which he eventually ignored.  When a family member entered his half of the trailer they found that he had sold all of the furniture to buy alcohol and had been sleeping on the floor.  He had stopped paying lot rent and his cousin who still legally owns the trailer owes $2,000 rent.    Other members of the group feel that they let him down and he owes all of them money.  Their current plan is to wait until an immigration  judge establishes a bond for him, pay it collectively and keep him with a family under their watchful eye until he again establishes a work record and pays everyone back.  Alcohol is the elephant in  the room which neither his relative nor ICE seem to know how to address.

Ricardo 3.

It is the Christmas season.  Half of my living room is filled with Xmas packages and the other half is full of belongings from Ricardo who has been sent to Mexico.  The mix seems strange to me; things are not right.   His step-daughter and I drove 150 miles to St. Louis last Thursday to send his 40 pound suitcase with him.  It cost us $6 to park near the immigration office ; we were warned that parking on the street would bring a St. Louis ticket which we didn’t need.  The ICE center was full of middle aged white men who were very polite to me.  We were shone to the luggage room but then told that they couldn’t accept the suitcase we had (it was one that had been used several times to fly on Air Mexico).  The government charter flight wouldn’t accept it.  Even though it weighed only 40 pounds, it was too big.  We gave money that Ricardo could use to get from the border to Mexico City.  We felt like our trip had been in vain.

We talked with Ricardo several days later. He was glad to be in Mexico and his parents were looking forward to his being with them for Xmas.  This was the tradeoff – they were supported for 10 years but son and parents never saw each other.  I wondered how they would live, but knew that now was not the time to ask.  Ricardo’s younger brother has just crossed the border; maybe it is time for him to support his parents.  Maybe Fed Ex will take some of Ricardo’s things