It was eleven at night on a Wednesday and I sat with my legs crossed, back against the car window, reading the last chapters of a book I had been assigned in class. I could hear the soft breathing of my brother sleeping in the front seat, and the hum of the Beatles album that my dad loved to play when he was driving. I could feel the slow movement of the car as it advanced down the line to cross the border, so we could finally go back home. It was a regular wednesday night for my family and I, until it wasn’t.
After school we had drove down to Mexico for my brother’s weekly Karat lesson, and we planned on crossing back home afterwards, the same way we had a million times before. What happened next is a bit of a blur to me even now, I suppose forgetting details was my way of coping with the situation. Before I knew it we were sat inside a tall gray building, where everything seemed to be made out of metal. All I can remember clearly is how cold I felt, and how I wondered how it was physically possible to feel so cold. I hated myself for wearing a dress that day.
Three officers proceeded to ask my brother and I what felt like a million questions with cold, harsh voices. “Does your father live with you?”, “You were both born in the US is that correct?” “How long has he lived with you?”, “Are you lying to us?”. As they twisted our words and raised their voice, I began to feel more and more exasperated. They started to repeat their questions, and interrupting us when we tried to answer. “Please, please, please!” is all I remember saying, I had never felt so helpless. They then proceeded to insult our father in front of us, saying he was a bad example and that he should be ashamed to cry in front of his children. When they finally called over my father for questioning I started crying. I couldn’t remember the last time I did, but there’s something so heart wrenching that comes from listening to the strongest person you know beg for their life back that makes you want to drown yourself in tears. It feels like I haven’t stopped crying since.
As eleven at night turned into two in the morning, they took my father away from me. The verdict was in and he wasn’t allowed to live in the United States anymore because his work Visa had expired. I watched the person I loved the most in my life hug me with tear stained cheeks before getting in his car and driving back down south. He told us he’d call us as soon as he could. An officer took us across the border and dropped us off in the street, leaving us to find our way home by ourselves. I took my brother’s shaky hand in mine and did just that.
The next day, I buried the night before under my bed, and I didn’t dare look back at it until now, eight months later. It’s the kind of pain you never want to experience twice, but for the sake of awareness I decided to dig it back up one last time. I hope people can understand how incredibly overlooked the immigration policies are, and how the government continues to tear hundreds of families apart every day. But most importantly I want people to know that immigration issues have no face.
As a privileged teen girl who likes to watch movies and go to concerts on the weekends, none of my friends would ever imagine something so devastating would happen to me, and to this day I haven’t told them. It’s hard enough to type it up, let alone speak it out loud. Victims of immigration policies don’t always look like a man in his 40’s wearing ratty clothes and asking for change. Sometimes it looks like the girl who sits behind you in chemistry class that never has time to hang out because she has to take care of her brother, or the popular guy that’s always late to class because you think he’s too cool to be on time but in reality he has to drop off his siblings at a different school first. Sometimes the people who have suffered the most from our dysfunctional government, are the ones with shoes on their feet and a smile on their face.
