The Science Behind Obama’s Deportation Record

[Editor’s Note: I wrote last week about the way the Obama Administration had immigration enforcement agencies twist the rules so they could reach their “record” deportations goal. This week we share a post from Brownsville, Texas and Michael Seifert, a longtime activist and community organizer there. You can read more of his work here.]

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

Amongst the graduates was Sandra (her name has been changed). She told me that she wanted to study medicine and that she would like to be a surgeon. I said, “What a great thing to aim for. Congratulations!”

She said, “Thank you,” and then 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 ago, just after Sandra’s graduation ceremony, she and her family had gotten up early on a Monday morning, piled into the family car and headed out to the tomato fields. Sandra and her mom and dad and her older sister would make about $50 a piece for a hard day’s work weeding tomato plants in the blazing south Texas sun. On that Monday morning, however, as they headed toward the tomato farm, a border patrol vehicle parked outside their neighborhood, pulled them over.

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

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. The officer asked the arresting agent about the probable cause for the arrest. Sandra told me, “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.’” But the family, with more than ten years in the country and with some small children who were U.S.  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 across the border.

The family knew no one there, but friends in the community began making phone calls and gathering together funds. By the very evening of the same day that they had been arrested, they found a smuggler and along with 42 other people, crossed the Rio Grande in a rubber boat, walked for five hours through the brush, making it home by midnight.

The smuggler charged them $550 a piece and the family had to come up with another $300 so that someone could pay the fees to get their car out of the Border Patrol impoundment lot. Instead of earning $ 200 cleaning tomatoes, they had lost nearly $1,500.

I asked Sandra why they had come back. She looked at me as if I had just said something truly silly, and said, “Why, this is our home. We have no place in Mexico. We have no place.”

Sandra took her leave and went off to share a piece of cake with her friends. They all had documents, and were excitedly talking about their plans for university.

Michael Seifert lives and writes in Brownsville, Texas.