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“How did you get to be so strong? You survived three stays in detention - away
from your children - and came out tough, a leader.”
“Well,
I made it through detention… but I’m not done yet. Eight years of struggle
against deportation and I’m still fighting. I guess I am similar to my mother –
she
was very strong – muy
fuerte. She was a fighter, and
gave me a foundation of righteousness, honesty and the ability to face
difficulties. Mamí was from Jalisco, and Papa from Guanajuato. They both
traveled from the rural areas to Mexico City to find work.”
“I grew up in Mexico City. It was very
dangerous, with lots of violence. I saw many injustices, especially to the
indigenous peoples (los Indios) who
came to the city from their small villages. We had a law of survival, those of
us in the poor areas. We had to look out for each other or no one would make
it. But this did not include los indios.
People looked down on them, refused to help. Once I saw a little Indian girl
die on the streets near my house. The family held her little body while they
cried. Her illness, her death, they were preventable, but she had no money or
medical attention. I thought to myself, that’s not right.”
The
injustice and cruelty deeply troubled Jeanette. She recognized that the
indigenous people were just looking for work to feed their families and saw the
parallels between these migrants and her parents, who had also come to the city
to find work and stability.
I
asked Jeanette where her strong moral stance came from. Did her parents go to
church? Were they devout Catholics?
“My parents were Catholic, but not devout. I
don’t identify with any one church, and I don’t go to church all of the time. I
do pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe, she’s my strength, and I believe that God
is in everything and in everyone. All the churches, the UCC, Quaker, Catholic,
they all believe in the same God.”
“Did
you find moral authorities in teachers?”
“I
went to a public school in the city. One teacher I remember, it was in what you
would call middle school. He talked about the need for justice and said that we
should fight against injustice whenever we find it. I remember him very well.”
In
contrast, my protected childhood yields middle school memories of astronomy and
social studies, no nuggets of social justice or racial awareness. Big hair,
1980’s neon, and unpopularity were the biggest problems at my school.
“Jeanette,
do you have a favorite memory from growing up? Anything that makes you smile?”
She
paused, dropping her eyes momentarily to her youngest daughter, who had emerged
from the house with a purple bunny in tow. Zury waved the stuffed animal at me
and flashed a dimple as she explained she had bought it from the yard sale.
Jeanette pressed her hand firmly against the small of the little girl’s back
and shrugged.
“I
don’t remember any one place or event, just that I always had lots of plans,
many projects and visions for what I wanted to do. Many things were going
through my head. Not centered on me or what I could do on my own account, but
about other people and what I could do for them. That included my family, too.”
“So
you always felt like you wanted to help people?”
“Oh,
yes. I wanted to fight for the important things, change what was wrong or what
upset me. Helping other people makes me happy.”
Zury’s
antics with the purple bunny elicited a smile from Jeanette. A gust of wind
caught the girl’s long hair and flipped it up in a fluid pinwheel.
“We
had to leave my parents and siblings when my oldest daughter was about Zury’s
age. It was a difficult time. We didn’t
need more money, because we both had jobs, but we wanted security for our
family. Salvador, my husband, he drove a bus, and he was held up three times at
gunpoint. It was terrifying.”
“Were
you ever on the bus when that happened?”
“Yes,
one of the times. Usually it was a group of three men who got on the bus
together, one would go to the back, one to the middle, and one stayed up front
and put a gun to the driver’s head. When the driver stopped the bus and held up
his hands, the other two robbers moved through all of the passengers and asked
for their money, watches, jewelry, anything they had. If they got all they
wanted, they would get off the bus without using the gun. After this happened
three times to my husband, his good friend (also a bus driver) was shot and
killed. That was when Salvador and I decided to go. We were already frightened,
but after the murder of Salvador’s friend we feared for our lives.”
I
had heard this expression several times in recent weeks when I visited other
women in detention, one from El Salvador and one from Honduras. They told me, “Tiene miedo de mi vida,” which means “I
am afraid for my life.” The women’s expressions were characterized by downcast
eyes, mouths pressed to a straight line, fingers tapping nervously. After they
confessed their worry they would stare defiantly, daring me to lower their evaluation
of the danger.
As
if she read my mind, Brenda translated a second time, “She wants you to know
that they had enough money to live, but came for security. They wanted a safe
life for their daughter and the children still to come.”
“When
you made plans to come, did you try to get documents, visas?”
All
of the women laughed. One named America broke in impatiently, “There are no
visas or work permits from Mexico. Not since maybe 1986. If you are Mexican
there is no way to get permission to come to the United States, not unless you
are with big business and have lots of money.”
Jeanette
nodded affirmation. “There were no papers for us. We couldn’t wait twenty,
thirty years to see if the rules changed. We would have died long before then.”
“How
did you cross the border?”
“We
left before Christmas in 1997. I told Salvador that I wanted to be in the
United States by the 24th, Christmas Eve. So we contacted some
friends of his that lived in the States. I was both happy and sad to leave
Mexico City. Happy that my little family was safe and together, but sad that we
were leaving parents and siblings. We had no idea when we would see them again.
Also we had no presents for our daughter, had nothing.”
Jeanette
described the hazardous border crossing with Salvador’s friend from Guatemala
and his wife, a U.S. citizen. The American couple crossed into Mexico and then
walked back through the border crossing with Jeanette’s daughter, who “passed”
as their own. Jeanette noted that her oldest was fair and blended more easily
with Americans.
After Salvador and Jeanette saw that their
daughter was safely across the border, they came by different routes. Salvador
made it to the meet-up point with his friends, but Jeanette was caught by
Border Patrol and deported to another border town after midnight. Border Patrol
often deports immigrants in the middle of the night, where they immediately
became prey for robbers and bandits in the border towns. Terrified of the
unfamiliar dark streets, Jeanette searched for a church where she could
shelter.
Evading
a group of men who went after her backpack, she ran through the town until she
found a sanctuary church, una iglesia.
After communicating with Salvador and their friends, she hid in the trunk of a
car and successfully crossed into the United States to join her husband and
daughter. Salvador had promised to be in America by the 24th, and
they did, in fact, arrive on Christmas Eve, 1997. The trio headed to Denver to
join Salvador’s extended family, aunts and uncles and cousins.
Jeanette
rocked back and forth in her chair as she recalled the early days in Denver. As
she searched for the right words, raindrops scattered across our group,
threatening clothes and refreshments. We hurried once again to batten down the
yard sale, and I looked to Jeanette to see if we should move inside.
“No,
no,” she said. “It’s not supposed to rain today. I think it will blow over.”
I
asked if optimism had helped her to start a new life in this country.
“No,”
she said slowly, “it was very difficult. I didn’t know anyone here, and didn’t
speak any English. Actually – not many people know this – but I struggled with
anxiety and depression. It’s hard for me, but then it’s always hard at the
beginning.”
Jeanette
smiled wryly. “I keep busy to stop my mind going off in those dark directions.
I decided that if I needed help, other people must need help, too. When I
looked around I found that others were much worse off than me.”
“Whenever
I start to complain about something, I realize that I just need to fix it. I
tell other people to do the same.” Her friends nodded in agreement, as if they
had been caught up in many of Jeanette’s fixes.
“We
have no idea how Jeanette has energy to do all the work she does,” said Brenda.
“I
don’t know how I do it, either,” laughed Jeanette. “In the beginning I kept
reminding myself that we were creating a better life for our family, just like
my parents did when they left the countryside for Mexico City.”
Jeanette
started work in the U.S. as a janitor, cleaning office buildings. She joined a
union, the SEIU Local 105, and became an organizer and leader for that group.
In 2003 she started the group Derechos Humanos / Rights for All People, in part
to begin a dialogue between the immigrant community and the police. She and
Salvador had three more children: Luna, Roberto, and Zury, and Jeanette
volunteered at the children’s schools in addition to maintaining her other work
and volunteer schedules. She tried to pick the children up after school every
day despite her full-time job and volunteer obligations.
Intrigued
by her work at Derechos Humanos, I asked how she felt about police after she
was stopped for driving with expired plates. Jeanette’s difficult journey with
law enforcement and ICE began with that stop in 2009, after she was pulled over
by a police officer on a busy street in the suburban community of Parker.
“I understand they have a job to do. What I do
not like is the law that lets local police act like ICE officers, ask if people
are legal. When I was pulled over, the
policeman did not say I was speeding, had expired plates, a taillight out,
anything. His first question to me was ‘Are you legal or illegal?”
“I couldn’t believe he stopped me to ask that.
I was angry and felt so powerless. When I finally got home, I cried and cried.”
Jeanette
was arrested for driving without a license. Immigrants without papers could not
obtain a driver’s license in Colorado at that time, so they were forced to
drive without one. (It’s still difficult for men and women without documents to
obtain a license). Jeanette was also
charged with possession of the false documents that she planned to use while
applying for yet another job. Her husband was fighting cancer, and the economic
recession of the early 2000s forced her to take extra jobs to support the
family.
To
avoid more serious felony charges of identity theft, Jeanette pled guilty to a
misdemeanor crime: possession of forged documents. She spent twenty-three days
in jail. Her crime was reported to ICE by the Arapahoe County police, and ICE
started deportation proceedings (what the government calls a process of
removal) against her.
“Immigration
problems were happening in Denver at that time in 2009,” said Jeanette, “but no
one was talking about them. Deportations, detention, police harassment, etc. –
all that was going on, but people were scared and ashamed. I was the first one
to talk about it publicly, to raise awareness of the issues.”
The
other women nodded. Brenda said sadly, “My husband was fighting to stay in the
country then, too, but we didn’t know how to find help.”
Brenda’s
two daughters, aged twelve and eight, ran back and forth between her and their
car. I knew the girls were touching base to see when they could leave, and I
protested that she didn’t have to stay, I could muddle through on my own.
Brenda smiled and shook her head. “They’re fine. The younger one has just had some
problems with her dad leaving, so they’re clingy with me. They don’t understand
why he had to go away.”
“That’s
what I’m saying,” said Jeanette. “People suffer in silence, and no one
understands what happens, except maybe other people of color. When I started to
talk openly with all of the groups I belong to, I became the face and voice of
arrests, deportation, detention. Other people in trouble latched on to me
because they felt similar pain.”
Jeanette
noted the problems with how police enforce the laws, problems with racism. She
said the struggles of black Americans are more in the media right now, but
Latinos share many of the same difficulties. Profiling is so endemic that she
was put in detention along with U.S. citizens who had been pulled over for
“driving Latino.” Jeanette continues to work with the police to help fix the
errors in the system. I told them about my youngest, Guatemalan-born son and
how I fear that he will need to drive with his citizenship card and U.S.
Passport in the glove compartment. All of the women nodded somberly.
“Unless
things change, he will.”
In
2012, after Jeanette’s deportation case ended in appeal, she received a phone
call from Mexico City. Her mother, Maria, was dying of terminal cancer. Though
Jeanette had not seen her mother in sixteen years, they spoke at least once a
week on the phone, and were very close. Her mother’s strength had shaped
Jeanette’s love of family, her passion for social justice, and her ambition to
create a better life.
“It
was one of the most difficult moments of my life. I had so many feelings and
emotions, including anger at the system. There were no exceptions for
humanitarian reasons. I could not possibly leave the country legally to see my
mother and I knew that leaving would hurt my case with the Board of Immigration
Appeals. My head said to me, ‘Don’t go,
don’t leave your three young ones with their dad – he has to work and can’t
take care of them.’ My littlest daughter was a one-year-old. I could not bear
to think of leaving her . . . but my heart said, ‘me obligo de ir’ – I had to go.’”
I
repeated after Jeanette the Spanish phrase, “El corazón dice sí, mi mente dice no. My heart said yes, my mind
said no.”
Tears
formed and slipped to her lower lashes. “I do not regret my decision, even
though Mamí died while I was on the
plane. No me repiento.”
The
consequences of her flight were immediate and severe. After burying her mother,
Jeanette was isolated in Mexico City with her elderly father. She had no legal
means of returning to the United States and no money. Her family in Denver
could not spare cash for a trip back to the United States so Jeanette had to
support herself and her father. She ran into a serious obstacle while searching
for work in Mexico City.
“There
is a kind of unwritten rule that no one will hire you unless you are between
the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. I was forty at the time, and every time I
told them my age, they said No. No jobs. I said, “What can a woman of eighteen
do that I can’t do? I have experience!” but they never changed. It was
injustice and discrimination all over again.”
“Those seven months were sad for me. I was
scared and depressed. There was no way to get money for a trip home – Salvador
could not send any because he was paying an extra thirty dollars a day for
child care. Each time I called home the children would cry. They were not doing
well. The baby, especially, had no concept of time. She would say to me, ‘Mañana tu vas a regresar?’ Tomorrow you
going to come home?”
Jeanette
started crying for real now. Her prior troubles and tribulations were nothing
compared to this separation from her children, this despair. “I was afraid to
cross the border by myself. It was so hard the first time, and had grown even
more difficult. La frontera, the
border, was crawling with drug-runners, thieves, kidnappers, extortionists and
rapists. They would think I had money because I was trying to cross, because I
must have family in the U.S.”
Jeanette
found the separation from her children too much to bear and decided to risk the
difficult journey back to Denver. She identified a coyote and a group planning to cross to the U.S. They walked for
seven days and nights to get to the border between Mexico and Texas. Her voice
faltered as she recalled the cold, the hunger, the feel of the stones through
the flapping soles of her thin shoes, her feet bleeding. As we talked, Jeanette
paused to look at the sky, where clouds had dispersed and late afternoon blue
shone through. A fingernail moon glimmered faintly overhead. She pointed up at
it.
“The
only thing that kept me going was seeing the moon at night. The glow of the
moon and stars was the only light we had, and I would look at the moon and
think ‘Luna,’ which is the Spanish word for moon and also my daughter’s name.
The thought of my daughter – all my children – it was the only thing that kept
me going.”
Her
voice cracked, and she paused to balance on the chair and wipe her face with a
paper cocktail napkin. The chill breeze and smells of early fall in Colorado
recalled us to this place and time, so far from the hot desert springtime near
Presidio, Texas, where Jeanette crossed.
“I
prayed to the spirit of my mother and to the Virgin of Guadalupe, prayed
constantly for help.”
Jeanette
arrived safely in the United States but was promptly arrested by the Border
Patrol and placed in detention near El Paso in the spring of 2013. She was not
deported right away, but ICE was quickly apprised of her case and her appeal
was dismissed. The ICE officers in El Paso placed Jeanette in isolation at the
detention center there. She had no contact with her family or community, only
weekly phone calls from her lawyer. Jeanette was geographically closer to her
family, but they seemed more remote than ever.
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