Bad grades or disorderly conduct may be the reason why high school seniors are not allowed to walk the graduation ceremony, but this was not the case for a senior at my old high school. My classmate was deported a few days before his graduation. The night of graduation there was a cold silence that could not be ignored. We all felt the pain of his parents, who were only left to imagine their son walking the stage.

In the eastern Coachella Valley, Border Patrol trucks are seen daily—at every stop light and at every gas station. They hide behind bushes at night waiting for cars to drive by and seize any opportunity to stop them. Every year, exceptional students are deported and although they are productive members of society, they are denied the chance of furthering their education due to lack of money, support and, unfortunately, their legal status.

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama promised he would create immigration reform that would benefit those applicable, but this promise was turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead, the Obama Administration has deported more undocumented people than any other president in history. On the bright side, President Obama passed an executive action in 2012 that allows those who entered the country as children and meet certain guidelines to be considered for deferred action for a period of two years with subject to renewal. Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals (DACA) provides those applicable with a work permit and a social security number that allows them to enroll in college. DACA is still active today, but with the new president-elect arriving in the White House, it could become history. Trump said he will revoke DACA once he takes office and this is something to be afraid of.

Every two years, those in the process of renewing their work permit must take a biometrics exam, information which will fall under Trump’s Administration. From 2012 to 2015, a total of 908,479 DACA cases have been approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. This means that today there is approximately 1 million undocumented students being productive members of society, whose personal information is in the hands of Trump. If Trump follows as promised and revokes DACA, a lot of talent, dedication, ambition and intelligence will be tossed out.

Those who oppose DACA argue that the government cannot reward people who committed a crime, because it produces a moral hazard. They believe that Dreamers or DACA recipients are criminals and should be punished. But, what crime did they commit if their presence here is not fault of their own, as they were brought here as children by their parents? Many DACA recipients do not even speak the language of their parent’s country, how can we “send them back” when they have no recognition of that place?

Our immigration laws are broken, which means we have a lot to do. Let’s give undocumented students a chance at being educated and the chance to be contributing members of our society. Undocumented students face consequences for actions they did not commit and actions they have little control over. What this country needs is a path to citizenship for undocumented students so they are able to study, work and live in this country without fear and without prejudice.

About the author:

Leydy Rangel is a youth reporter with Coachella Unincorporated and a senior journalism major at Cal Poly Pomona. She’s an eastern Coachella Valley resident and enjoys telling stories from her community. View her author page here.

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of three reports on the DREAMer movement. The first part can be read here.

The Diary of Joaquín Magón Entry 28: The Dreamer Chronicles, Part 2

SALINAS — By the time Alma Torres turned 12, her father had been back and forth between the family’s home in Michoacan, Mexico and the United States so many times that he decided it would be best to just bring the entire family to live with him in King City, California.

The elder Torres, seeing that the price of bread had increased to the point that he could no longer make a living working as a security guard at the local television station, began going to California in the mid-90s to supplement his earnings by working in the fields. But by the early 2000’s, the elder Torres had had enough.

As his daughter, now 23, puts it: “It was in 2002 when we came here for the first, and last, time.”

The Torres family was part of a wave of immigrants who arrived in the mid-90s during a period of economic and politic tumult in Mexico. In 1994, the gruesome assassination in Tijuana of presidential candidate Luis Donato Colosio spurred a massive exodus of international investors; Ernesto Zedillo, a neoliberal, was elected president; and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) inundated the country with cheap, U.S.-produced food products, at the expense of Mexican farmers.

The immigration stories told by young people, like Torres, who crossed the US-Mexico border as children, are often much different than those of their parents, who speak of days spent crossing unforgiving deserts, swimming across rivers and running full speed to avoid La Migra.

“We came with a lady — it was (me), my sister and two other cousins,” she recalls. “They were younger and I was the oldest. We went to the airport and landed in Tijuana. I went with one lady and my mother with another. I remember that we were crossing the border through the main gate. One of the children that came with us got sick and began to vomit. So we had to get out of the line and go back. This time they gave us a pill to sleep. By the time I awoke, I was on this side.”

Moving to a new city is hard enough for any 12-year-old. But for Torres, moving to King City from her small ranch in Michoacan meant adjusting to a new country, a new language, and a foreign culture.

“I entered school (in the U.S.) in the seventh grade. The language, the people, the customs, everything was different and it was very hard to adapt … I didn’t understand what people were telling me, and I became isolated. My sisters would cry because it was so difficult.”

And, like so many undocumented teens in the U.S., when it came time to think about college, Torres had no idea what her options were, let alone where to begin.

“After I graduated high school I didn’t know that I could go to college. I had no idea what I wanted to study; I didn’t know what my major would be; I just knew that I wanted to [continue going] to school.”

In a scenario all too familiar to many immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children, Alma remembers how her parents gave her “the talk” — that she might have to choose the cheapest option, a community college maybe, because she was undocumented.

“I think I always knew I was undocumented. But it wasn’t until high school that I learned that I don’t have the same benefits or opportunities as other people,” she says. “Others would talk about going to college or getting their drivers license but not [my sisters and I]. I knew. It’s in high school that it clicks that you don’t have the same opportunities.”

Not knowing what options were available for her after high school graduation, she got a job working at a packing shed, working a late shift from 2 pm to 11 pm. After spending a year on the job, Torres had gathered enough information on her own to enroll at Hartnell Community Collge in nearby Salinas. Once enrolled, it took a great deal of sacrifice to pay for her tuition and related expenses.

“It’s around $47 per unit, you’re looking at 3 units per class, [and] you take 3 classes,” she says, not to mention the books and the gas for her trips from King City to Salinas, an hour and a half round trip.

Relief came earlier this year, however, after the enactment of AB 540, a California state law making Dreamers like Torres eligible for college financial aid programs funded by the state.

“I already got a semester paid for and it’s such a great relief,” says Torres.

Also this year, Torres’ application was accepted for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a federal program that gives temporary legal status to certain undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children.

“Before [DACA] I didn’t have any plans set. I didn’t see my future. I just kept going to school, waiting for whatever came up. Now I feel like I can finish school, I can have a driver’s license, I don’t have to be afraid of driving, I have the chance of applying for better jobs with better pay, and can definitely graduate from a university,” she says. “Once I got my (work) permit (through DACA), things started falling into place.”

Torres has one semester left at Hartnell, and plans to begin applying to four-year universities in October. Her top choices are within the California State University system — San Jose, Monterey, Sacramento and Long Beach. She intends to major in psychology with the goal of eventually earning a PhD.

Having legal status through DACA emboldened Torres to become increasingly vocal about her support for comprehensive federal immigration reform. She attended a “Caravan for Citizenship” rally in Bakersfield over the summer, and has even hosted house meetings to share information about immigration reform with her community.

“Comprehensive immigration reform is important for my family,” says Torres. “It’s not only about me, about me being able to have a life or about me being able to have a good job. It’s also about my parents. The biggest fear for my parents is that they’ll never be able to go back (to Mexico) to see their parents … that they won’t be able to go back in time.”

The Diary of Joaquín Magón is written by Jesús E. Valenzuela Félix, a reporter from Coachella living in Salinas and working for the United Farm Workers Foundation. He is a regular contributor to Coachella Unincorporated and New America Media. 

By BRENDA RINCON/Coachella Unincorporated

COACHELLA, Calif. – The immigration issue is not about numbers for Esperanza Navarro. As she watched President Obama’s immigration reform speech yesterday, she could not help but think about her recently deported uncle.

“I don’t have any statistics or research or backing, but [immigration reform] is very personal and real for me,” said Navarro, 24, youth coordinator for Building Healthy Communities. “I feel it’s been back and forth with this administration. We’ve been waiting a long time, and I just don’t want to be disappointed again…but I am hopeful.”

That sentiment was echoed by the Eastern Coachella Valley residents who gathered to watch the President outline his plan for comprehensive immigration reform yesterday. With a similar plan unveiled the day before by a bipartisan group of Senators, it seems that long-awaited immigration reform is imminent – but while they are hopeful, this group of residents isn’t holding their breath.

“There is a saying in Mexico that may apply here,” said Mario Lazcano, 63, immigration activist and leader of El Comité Latino. “Del plato a la boca se cae la sopa (the soup can spill from the plate to the mouth).”

In other words, there are many things that could derail the proposed reforms before they come to fruition.

“It looks like many forces in favor of immigration reform have gathered, but we can’t forget that will also be very powerful anti-immigrant forces,” he said, in Spanish. “Immigration is not a political problem, but it has been politicized. It is an economic problem.”

A Unified Voice from out of the Shadows

Another problem residents see is the potential splintering among immigrant groups.

“This is the time for the pro-immigrant groups, from the seniors to the DREAMers, to join together and have their voices heard,” said Yanet Villicana 21, an undocumented college student. “[Reform] is not a given, but we’re almost there. There has to be a movement of all who support our cause in order to make a change.”

Lazcano added, “If we all raise our voices in unison, if we all push together, the likelihood of reform this year is much greater. One of the most beautiful things I’ve heard is when someone asked [an undocumented student] if they wanted the DREAM Act. He said, ‘Yes. But I also want my mom and dad and everyone else to be able to stay.”

In a community where undocumented immigrants feel shame and fear deportation, Cristina Mendez, 34, credits the DREAMer movement with bringing the immigration movement out of the shadows and into the national consciousness.

“When I was in high school, nobody spoke of their immigration status [even as] we were marching against Proposition 187,” said Mendez, an interpreter/translator. “Instead of being the group that bows their head or being the quiet immigrants, the DREAMer movement said, ‘I am from here. I contribute, my parents contribute, and we will continue to do so.’”

Trinidad Arredondo, 29, agrees. “The young people start revolutions, and this we know from our country’s history. The youth have a lot of energy, and the older folks will support their efforts. That is how we can work together.”

Youth in this community have rallied around the DREAMer cause, regardless of their own immigration status.

“Everyone should be afforded the same opportunities,” said American-born Johnny Flores, 15, a reporter for Coachella Unincorporated. “I shouldn’t have the opportunity to attend a great school while my friend, who is an [undocumented] immigrant, might not be able to have the same opportunity just because he wasn’t born in the U.S.”

Fixing a Broken System

Arredondo, project coordinator for Building Healthy Communities, is optimistic because the President spoke of the importance of overhauling the existing immigration processes.

“I knew that [immigration reform] would happen in President Obama’s second term, because the time has come to fix the entire system. I was pleased to hear him say that not only are we going to fix the policies, we are going to fix the system.”

Mendez believes the overhaul of this country’s immigration system could be a turning point for immigrants all over the world.

“The opportunity that presents itself at this moment is not only for the immigrants who live here, but for immigrants all over the world who leave their countries in search of work,” she said. “The United States has an opportunity to create an immigration system that helps the immigrants who support this country’s economy, and this can serve as an example for other countries.”

But Lazcano cautions that, even if the proposed reforms are implemented, they might not be enough. “They are saying they will put us at the back of the line. What does that mean? Right now, it already takes over 20 years for a legal resident to obtain legal residency for a child over age 21.”

Sustaining the Momentum

Residents agreed that the Latino community must continue to play a visible role.

“The opportunity for comprehensive immigration reform is imminent. But we must continue to sustain the momentum built up around this issue in the recent political climate and hold our elected officials accountable,” said Aurora Saldivar, 19, college student and reporter for Coachella Unincorporated. “It’s too personal to not do so.”

Cristian Cabrera, 21, an undocumented college student recently approved for DACA, believes the immigrant community can seize the moment.

“I am hopeful because I know there will be many groups that will push Congress until we get humane immigration reform,” Cabrera said.

Arredondo said the community has come too far on this issue to give up the fight.

“We will achieve immigration reform, but it is not easy. It is a process, a bureaucracy that won’t take effect overnight. We must come together, we all must fight for this,” he said. “Our community now has the voice and the political strength because we have worked so hard to achieve that. But we must also have the political will.”

View Photos from Discussion

The Diary of Joaquín Magón Entry 24: The Deportation Chronicles, Part 3

Raul: Those Who Said Goodbye

In 2010, there were an estimated 387,000 “removals” according to Department of Homeland Security documents. My high school friend Raul was one of them.

He has been living in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico, for three years now. He has been trying to adjust to his new life ever since.

The fact that he was born in Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico, doesn’t help much. He may as well have been born in the United States because Mexicali is a different world. Even though its motto is “the homeland begins here,” it is a strange city that most Mexicans wouldn’t even consider Mexico. The neon lights, the smells of taco stands, candy stores, strip clubs, pharmacies, have made it into a city of tourists and passersby going to or coming from the U.S.

Meeting someone born and raised in Mexicali is not as common as meeting someone passing through. The heat of the desert mixes with the traffic to cause a heat even those who have lived there their whole lives can’t stand. I’ve driven through those streets plenty of times to pick up family members that rode the bus from Sinaloa. I love it, but I am aware that it’s a privilege to be able to come and go.

When Raul was deported, it struck him as crazy. He was, after all, a college student with no criminal record. He was stopped and questioned by the police while hanging out with some friends in one of Indio’s deserted areas, a big patch of desert, with dirt and bushes and, well, nothing around them. The officer told them they were trespassing. Then the officer asked if he had papers. He didn’t.

He recalls, “Then he called immigration. Immigration hassled and harassed me verbally for a while…then they told me I was to be deported. They took me to a station where I explained that I was a student in college, and that I had done nothing wrong. They didn’t release me but offered… a voluntary deportation and that as soon as I was on Mexican soil I could arrange to get papers the legal way…I had to “play piano” (get my fingerprints taken) and slept at the station for one night then they drove me to Mexico… oh and they gave me what looked like a small receipt telling me that I had just been deported.”

The promise of being able to fix papers if a person signs a voluntary deportation is a common practice. Detained immigrants are harassed until they see that signing this paper will end everything that it’s the best choice. Of course, it’s not. As Mario Lazcano, the immigration activist in Coachella, pointed out to a couple that was detained — the fact that they refused to sign is what kept them from being deported.

But Raul’s case is more common than not. And now he has to rough it in Mexicali. He has no family there. They all still live in the Eastern Coachella Valley. The family of a mutual friend of ours took him in.

Luckily he had saved some money. Ever since I’ve known Raul, regardless of how the economy was doing, he could always get a job. He even had two or three at a time. He’s had more or less that same luck in Mexicali.

“The first year was terrible as I was just adjusting to all the changes in my life. I had to learn many colloquial phrases and jump over the small language barrier I had. I had to adjust to the hostility, during the first year my house was broken into and robbed naked. Finding a job was difficult without a proper Mexican ID. I guess here in México they don’t like immigrants either, like from El Salvador and other southern countries. So I got whatever jobs I could. By 2011, I was working at a maquila [large factories that produce mostly U.S. products] where, because of my English I got an opportunity for a good job. Last year I got a job as an English instructor in a private school and I can say now I’m fully adjusted… I still think a lot about my family though.”

I have this feeling that humans often feel invincible. That we take risks like we’re immortals, we speed as if we’ll never get caught, and we talk about sickness like it won’t happen to us. It’s the way Raul lived in the U.S. as well. But undocumented immigrants must take extra precautions.

“In the back of my mind I always knew that I could get deported any time, as my father and brother once did,” he says. “So I wasn’t the first in my family to get deported.”

Raul adjusted at age seven to a life in the U.S., and now he has adjusted to life in Mexicali. He works and is on a constant dream to better his situation. Raul is one of those that President Obama said he wouldn’t deport — one of the 45 percent, a college student who could apply for DACA, like Mayte, if he was living in the United States.

But living in the ECV means that a cop can ask you for papers, being undocumented means being hunted like a school of fish with a net, no need to be precise or cautious, you just drag the damned thing and take what you can get. If you get caught there will be no lawyer there to defend you in the event that you cannot pay for one, and to hell with it – get kicked out, deported, have your name put into a database and live as a memory in the streets that saw you grow as the streets that saw your birth.

All Those Who Fight and DREAM

There is a huge difference between undocumented youth — the DREAMers — with no recollection of their home country and their parents who do. They fight for their lives in the open. They are taken away like Raul, sometimes they are stuck in a limbo that feels like an inescapable nightmare like Estela, or sometimes their hard work pays off like it did for Mayte.

In the ECV, we know all of these people. We know people who dream and fight even when the fight is not their own, like Lazcano. He is distressed by how common deportation is. We speak of it like an old friend, like a sickness, like the flu without a vaccine.

The road has been hard, and people want a comprehensive immigration process. And that fight in the Coachella Valley has been a slow process of empowering the community with the vote. As Lazcano points out, “[The fight for immigration reform] has allowed the following: there was a an Assemblywoman named Bonnie Garcia (R). We managed to defeat her. Then there was [Congresswoman] Mary Bono Mack (R) who had been in power for 14 years and…now we have a new Congressman [Dr. Raul Ruiz (D)].”

It has led to a community that has, over the years, amassed enough power to remove the politicians that stand in the way of immigration reform and replace them with those who say they will try and help.

Now, I don’t want to talk too much about a metaphorical giant rearing its head or the rise of a new wave of voters. What will happen will happen, and the ECV will, eventually, recover from the wounds inflicted upon it by ICE.

Until then, we’ll continue to talk about people who have been deported, people who will have to adjust their dreams to a new reality. The scars left by these mass deportations will heal; the community will heal itself, mend itself and learn to live, and the people will always remember and tell their stories – as I am sharing the stories of the four brave people who opened up to me and to the entire community.

Previously: The Deportation Chronicles, Part 1

Previously: The Deportation Chronicles, Part 2

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“The Diary of Joaquín Magón” is written by Jesús E. Valenzuela Félix, a reporter from Coachella living in Salinas and working for the United Farm Workers Foundation. He contributes regularly to Coachella Unincorporated.