Children as Weapons in Immigration War

Yesterday I went to visit a community-based organization in one of the neighborhoods in this Texas border region. The group was celebrating six young people – its “grupo de jóvenes” -- who had just graduated from high school. There were pictures, smiles, tears and a grand meal featuring roast turkey and cake.

Sandra (her name has been changed) was one of the graduates expected to be there. But she was missing. I learned that Sandra and her family had been arrested two weeks earlier and deported to Mexico. One of the community leaders offered to take me to Matamoros to hear her story so we finished up our turkey, grabbed our passports and headed across the bridge to the Republic of Mexico.

Sandra is a quiet young woman with intense eyes. She was dressed simply and neatly, with her hair pulled back.

I congratulated her on her graduation and asked her what she planned to do with her life. She sat forward in her chair and told me that she had always wanted to be a doctor. “Not just a doctor,” she said, smiling, “but a surgeon.” I told her that I thought that that was an impressive dream and wished her the best.

Thank you,” she said, and sighed. “Yes, it is a beautiful dream, but it is not to be. For me, it looks like I am never going to get out of the fields.”

She went on to tell me that two weeks prior, just after high school graduation, she and her family had gotten up early, piled into the family car and headed out to the tomato fields to pick. Sandra, her mom, dad and older sister would make $50 each for a day’s work weeding tomatoes in the blazing south Texas sun. On that Monday morning, however, as they headed toward the farm, a border patrol vehicle pulled them over.

As Sandra tells the story, the officer came up to the car asked to see their immigration documents. The family, although they have lived and worked in Texas for more than 10 years, remain undocumented, and so, apart from the 2- and 3-year-old babies, no one could produce any paperwork.

The officer ordered them out of the car. He called for backup and began searching the family for weapons and drugs. All he found, of course, were some hoes and spare diapers.

In short order, another border patrol agent arrived. She asked the arresting officer what made him pull the family over. Sandra recalled, “The guy pointed at my face and screamed, ‘Because they are brown! Don’t you know a Mexican when you see one?’”

Sandra told me that the family was then taken to a “processing center.” After a while, other officers brought them some papers to sign. “Just sign right here, where it says, ‘voluntary deportation,’” they said. But the family, with more than a decade in the U.S. and two small children who are citizens, wanted a hearing on their case from an immigration judge.

Sandra said: “We saw this little box at the top of the page where you can ask for a hearing, so we checked ‘yes,’ but then this official came in and saw that we had checked that box, so he tore up the piece of paper and said, ‘No, you are not going to request a hearing. You are going to ask for voluntary deportation.’ He laid a new form on the table, and walked out.”

The family held out for nearly five hours, as one officer after another came in demanding their signatures. Finally, just after noon, a border patrol official came into the holding cell. He looked at the family and said, “You will sign this document, or your family will be separated. The adults go to the detention center, and your children go someplace else. You will be lucky to see them again.”

Sandra looked down at the floor, and then she said to me, “Up until then, we had been strong. My mother had told us, ‘You will not cry! We are not criminals. We are a family.’ But when the border patrol went to pick up the little ones, they started to cry and so did we, so we signed the paper and were deported to Matamoros.”

The family knew no one there. But community members began making phone calls and gathering funds. By that very evening, they found a smuggler and along with 42 other people, crossed the Rio Grande in a rubber boat. They walked for five hours through the brush and made it home by midnight.

The smuggler charged Sandra’s family $550 apiece. So instead of earning $200 cleaning tomatoes, they had lost nearly $2,000.

Later, I asked Sandra why they had come back. She looked at me as if I was crazy. “Why, this is our home,” she said. “We have no place in Mexico. We have no place.”

This post is by Michael Seifert, of the Equal Voice network in the Rio Grande Valley