Are deportations an intentional strategy to destroy the Latino family unit?

File photo from Al Día

We've heard over and over how deportations are intended to target criminal elements of the undocumented population. But the Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse (TRAC) released a report in October of this year that indicated that only 38 percent of those put in deportation proceedings by ICE in the first six months of the year had any record of criminal activity, a definition that encompassed traffic violations by the way.

In a November release, TRAC stated that 2013 was a record year for immigration prosecutions, with 97,384 cases filed against new defendants. It represents a 5.9 percent increase from the 2012 deportation rate, and a 22.6 percent increase in the past five years.

The numbers stand in stark contrast to every public statement the administration (under Janet Napolitano's direction of DHS) has made about narrowing and refining the scope of deportations. (It is hard to predict what Jeh Johnson will do in her stead since he is so recently confirmed to the post.) 

According to the National Day Laborer Organizing Network — which participated in a number of actions to block deportation buses this past year — the enforcement of deportations orders continues to tear families apart. 

It is not the only organization to say so. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has long maintained that the impact of existing immigration policies has been borne by families, and organizations formed by the undocumented themselves — like Dream Activist — regularly make public the stories of families torn asunder by detention and imminent deportation. Many of the family impacted are "mixed" families, with U.S. citizen children and undocumented parents and/or siblings.

The result is utterly devastating to both the individuals involved and to cultural communities built around the importance — primacy, really — of family. We are seeding a generation of children ripped forcibly from their parents' sides by the state. A generation left behind, and lost to themselves and their ancestral culture.  

File photo from Al Día

A 2011 study of the Applied Research Center revealed that, at that time, more than 5,100 children of detained or deported immigrants were in foster care in 22 states. Some, like Encarnation Bail Romero's son or Amelia Reyes Jimenez's four children were adopted away from biological parents deemed to have abandoned them because they were deported or in detention. Others, like Cesia and Ronald Soza Jr., are in foster care after coming home from school to find their single parent detained, and subsequently deported, even though his children say he tried to comply with the requirements imposed by the state that should have permitted him to stay at least until they were of age.

The long-term effects of such forcible separations are not sufficiently studied, but many of the experts speaking about the mental health stressors of immigration at a recent Dart Center Workshop factor the fear of deportation and the effects of separation into their assessments of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorders that can, and do, affect the undocumented in the U.S.

There is some similarity to the forcible separation of Native American children from their families and cultures in our nation's history — though, of course, that was far more widespread and even more virulent and systemic than this. It is a cultural trauma that still impacts many Native American bands, nations and individuals, and it is not too tremendous a stretch to imagine a similarly lasting impact on the generations of young Latinos stranded here without their families and cultural anchors. (Moreover, it is impossible to ignore that the majority of those deported, by ICE's own statistics for 2013, are from four countries — Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — and are likely to include many with indigenous ancestry.)

Family separation is a huge concern for all immigrants. In fact, Asian immigration advocates have taken a strong stand against the switch from a family-reunification-centered visa allocation in the Senate bill in part because of the violence it will do to cultural norms centered on family.  

Still, I have long maintained that the debate about immigration policy took a turn a while ago from focusing primarily on lack of documentation to broader xenophobic "invasion" fears tied to the rapid demographic growth of Latinos — documented and citizen included — across the nation. 

Public excoriation of Latinos performing at sporting events; removal of Mexican American history and literature from Arizona schools; housing discrimination against Latinos; efforts to curtail Latino business and growth within municipalities under the aegis of immigration relief;  efforts to pit Latinos in a zero sum game against African-Americans  (which has only recently started to be counter-disputed with statistics from the 2010 Census) and many other increasingly visible manifestations of anti-Latino proposed public policy and raw sentiment have done nothing to dissuade me from my thinking. 

What better, then, to slow a population growth that is viewed as "undesirable" than to destroy Latino families through unprecedented deportation rates justified by the state's desire to restore order and safeguard sovereignty? 

I know many will bristle at this interpretation, and still I cannot shake it as I consider the deportation rate and the way it has utterly failed —time and again — at distinguishing between criminality and family need, between those who want to imperil security and those whose whole journey has been toward finding security for themselves and their loved ones.

Brave dreams: An interview with María Marroquín

Update: According to the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition, María and the six other undocumented students arrested in Georgia on April 5 have been released. "ICE agents interviewed the students, but ultimately declined to get involved," said the e-mail release PICC sent out April 8.

When María Marroquín first came to the United States at the age of 13, she thought she’d be seeing Mickey Mouse. She was excited and anticipating her first visit to Disneyworld.

That’s what she told the Transportation Security Officer at Miami International Airport who asked which tourist sites she and her family planned to visit during their visit from Lima, Peru. And, in fact, she stayed long enough in Miami to see palm trees for the first time, to swelter in the near tropical heat she had never experienced before and to notice “how clean and beautiful” the streets of this American city were.

Her family did eventually board a bus but it didn’t take them anywhere near the Orlando resort. Instead, it deposited them in New Jersey and into a life María didn’t expect.

That is — the life a regular American teenager. Except for one thing. They were undocumented.

María’s father had a job lined up already — doing laundry and cleaning at a hotel. It was very different than the work he had done in Lima. The family owned a restaurant there — a going venture for 10 years — and María’s father drove a taxicab at night to make ends meet. But he came to realize that without radically changing the family’s economic circumstances María and her two siblings wouldn’t graduate from high school.

The fact that work as a cabbie during the night shift was becoming increasingly dangerous helped to finalize the decision to come to the United States on visas — which the family overstayed. They moved to Pennsylvania not long after their initial foray north. María was enrolled in a high school in Cheltenham.

“I didn’t realize what being undocumented would mean,” María said. “None of my friends knew. I felt really isolated (and) like I couldn’t trust anyone. I thought they wouldn’t understand if I told them about my status. I felt embarrassed and ashamed.”

María’s parents took English as a Second Language classes, they paid taxes, they enrolled their three children in school, and took them with them to Spanish-language Masses — especially the ones at St. William Parish in Philadelphia, at which the community of Philadelphia-area Peruvian immigrants celebrate feast days together. María’s mother started working as a nanny, and the family settled into building their lives.

They consulted with lawyers early on to see if there was a way to legalize their status, but it proved a fruitless pursuit. After that, María and her siblings stopped talking to each other about their irregular status. They lived with it, in silence. Even so, she credits her family and her faith with getting her through .

She lived, María said, scared.

Her junior year in high school was marked by depression. She never knew what to answer when her friends asked her why she didn’t drive or have a driver’s license, or why she couldn’t participate in the many activities that seemed so normal to her peers. Nothing that required a social security number or government I.D. was open to her.

“It was so difficult,” she said. “And I knew I couldn’t build my life on lies. I don’t blame (my parents) for bringing me here. I don’t know what I’d be doing if I were in Peru. They wanted us to have a future.

"They are just regular people who work hard and want to take care of their children.”

In 2004 she graduated from high school and enrolled in Montgomery County Community College. She attended part-time, paying international student tuition rates — much higher than in-state or out-of-state ones — out of pocket. No financial aid was available to her. Then, like now, she earned money by babysitting and at odd jobs, and put it all toward her tuition.

It took María five years to get her associate’s degree while she worked and saved money and took what courses she could. She maintained a 3.98 GPA, and majored in social science. She’d like to continue on to get a four-year-degree — she’d be the first person in her family attain that — and to some day go to law school.

But no matter how hard she works and what she accomplishes academically, María knows the future she faces is limited by her undocumented status.

“I consider myself an American,” she said. “Everything I know — all my friends, my ideals — come from this country. I want to make my life here.”

María had hopes that the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) — bipartisan legislation that would have made an estimated 65,000 young people eligible for permanent legal status upon completion of two years of college or two years of honorable service in the military — would pass in Congress. That dream was dashed in December of 2010, when the Senate rejected the bill.

The DREAM Act would have not only given María an eventual path to legalization, but would have made it possible for her to continue her education at an in-state tuition rate.

“My parents sacrificed everything for me to be able to continue with my education,” María said. “To know I couldn’t felt like I was letting them down.”

And, she had tired of hiding.

March 19th she and six other undocumented youths “came out of the shadows” and told their stories at a rally at of Philadelphia’s Independence Mall.

“We decided to share our stories,” she said. “All we want is to continue our education. We want to do the right thing, we want to contribute. This is the only country we know and we consider it home, and we wanted to put a face to the immigration issue.”

“I know that there were undocumented youth listening” in the crowd of 150 people that gathered, she said. “I wanted to talk to those (in the crowd) who feel as alone as I had.

"A state DREAM Act bill would be great — then (young people) could afford to go to college and not be dropping out of high school.”

The crowd at the rally, mostly high school and college age people, according to María, were receptive. “They give me hope,” she said.

Her advocacy for a pathway to legalization for immigrant youth (she is the co-founder of DreamActivist Pennsylvania and DreamActivist.org) has been supported by many people — the representatives from Catholic organizations who have stood by her at press conferences, her Filipino boyfriend (who is also undocumented) and her siblings.

María’s sister, 21, dreams of becoming a pediatrician; her brother, 20, a Navy SEAL. Both are experiencing the same frustrations María has, and the same thwarted desire to give back to the nation they love.

Her parents, though proud of their eldest daughter, are scared for her, she said.

And now they must be panicked.

Yesterday (April 5) María was one of seven young people who delivered a petition to the president of Georgia State University asking him to keep the institution's doors open to undocumented students — something GSU is slated to stop doing as of the fall semester.

The seven proceeded to engage in civil disobedience — including marching through the campus and disrupting traffic. An hour later, according to the Dream is Coming web site — which is tracking their tweets — all seven were arrested and placed in an Atlanta jail.

It is quite possible, maybe even likely given the jail's alleged working relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they will be turned over to ICE.

“(Deportation) is always in the back of your mind,” María said during our interview March 24. “But this is something that is much bigger than myself. Our cause is just and it is right. That’s enough for me.”


A Philadelphia vigil for María Marroquín and the other six undocumented youths who participated in the civil disobedience at GSU will be held tomorrow (April 7) at 5 p.m. at Senator Toomey’s office at 1628 JFK Blvd. in Philadelphia.

Photos of the March 19th rally courtesy of María Marroquín.