Borderlands

My mornings in Nogales were spent at a migrant bus station. I have found my place doing deportation impact surveys, which means interviewing folks who have spent a significant amount of time living in the U.S. It has been eye opening to see the impact that U.S. immigration policy is having on communities and families. I’ve been impacted most by folks who are willing to share with me their stories, so I’d like to share two that have stood out to me.

I sat down with a man in his late 20’s who was from Fresno, California. He’d lived there since he was a child. He had been working in the framing business, trying to save up money to attend college, when he was deported because he got a traffic ticket. It was hard for me to hear these stories because we talked about issues such as the tuition hikes in California and the Dream Act. He really had not options for higher education because the cost had become too high. These both were policies that I had worked on, and would have benefited him, but ultimately did not pass.

The day before I left Nogales I met a man in his mid 20’s from Phoenix. He had lived in the U.S. for almost his whole life. As of last year his partner became pregnant. This was a big step for them, as she is diabetic and they had been trying to have a baby for over 5 years. The baby was born, but there were a few complications, and he had to spend a week in the hospital with the baby. Three weeks after this joyous event, the couple was sitting in their car in a public park in Phoenix. For no reason at all, except racial profiling, a police officer asked for documentation. This happened over a year ago. Since that day, he was deported, spent a year and two months in a detention center, and was just released in Nogales. He had not been able to see his daughter since she was 3 weeks old. Currently he is in Nogales, waiting for his partner to send him pictures of his daughter. This is the reality when folks like Joe Arpaio are allowed to be in power, and the community suffers. I heard many stories of families being seperated because police officers are allowed to ask for documentation status for minor traffic issues. Is separating newborns from their parents something we want our immigration policy to do?

We are all complicit in this system that is separating families and damaging communities. Although not all of you have been the the border, I hope you can think about borders in your own community. We need new, more humane immigration policy in this country, and that’s something that all of us can push for. My time at No More Deaths was also extremely important to how I perceive what’s going on in the border region, I encourage you to spend a week there if you can.