My friend Ingrid is being cast out of the tribe today, evicted from the country she has made her home, separated from her nine-year-old son and her husband, the aunt who raised her, and her community of friends. Ingrid came to the U.S. from Peru when she was only 17, fleeing trauma. She told me once, "There was nothing left for me there."
I met Ingrid when she was in Sanctuary at the Mountain View Friends Meeting House. She lived in Sanctuary while pursuing a court case that would hopefully allow her to overturn an earlier conviction and remain in this country. With Ingrid was her one-year-old son, Anibal, who learned to walk on the wooden slats of the meeting house floor. Every weekend her older son Bryant would join her, sacrificing soccer games with his friends and much of his casual outdoor time to sit inside the church with his mom and his brother. The children were good-natured, but confused at the way in which their lives had been turned upside-down.
That confusion will mount to emotional distress and pain when Ingrid has to leave for Peru today. She applied for U.S. passports for both of her boys months ago, fearing and preparing for the worst while always hoping for the best. At the time, Anibal napped while she completed the applications with the help of a volunteer, and I sat quietly by, wondering how she would support herself in Peru with two young children. Anibal received his passport but Bryant's documents have not yet come in the mail. He will - at least temporarily - lose his mother today.
Ingrid made a life for herself in this country. She worked two jobs, built a family and community, and crafted her own version of the American dream. Her major error was purchasing a social security number that belonged to another person. Ingrid did not know that the number she purchased belonged to Daisy Navarro, a woman who lived in Colorado. She didn't know where the number came from, only that she needed it to get a job. Our system is set up so that she couldn't obtain citizenship, couldn't work, couldn't become a full-fledged member of society. We all know the system is broken, and now a family will be torn apart because of our lack of willpower, our inability to solve a widely-recognized problem.
Because our broken immigration system doesn't always affect our own friends and family members, because we can hide from the costs of the brokenness, we don't fix it. Meanwhile, citizens like Navarro are hurt when their identity is stolen, and families that are undocumented or of mixed status are torn apart because we couldn't extend a guest worker permit, visa of path to citizenship.
Governor Hickenlooper denied a pardon for Ingrid after she fasted and waited outside his office for seven days. He said it was one of the hardest decisions he had to make, and he was grim-faced and unwilling to discuss it with reporters. Ultimately, our country could not forgive Ingrid her crime, though we forced her hand when we would not allow her to work without papers. We took her years of hard work, her dedication to family and community, her loving spirit and her positive attitude and then, because we are broken, we cast her out.
**On her scheduled deportation day, ICE granted Ingrid thirty more days to prepare herself and her family for the move to Peru. Ingrid still needs Bryant's passport and medical appointments for Anibal at Children's Hospital, and hopes to have everything in order by her new deportation date,
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