ThinkProgress
By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee
August 28, 2015
Christian
Hervis-Vazquez called his wife Viviana on Thursday afternoon to confirm
her worst fear: He was in Mexico. The U.S. federal immigration agency
Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) had deported him earlier that day.
Hervis-Vazquez
is an undocumented immigrant married to a U.S. citizen. They have three
young children who were all born here in the United States.
“The
children are taking it very, very bad,” Viviana said in an interview
with ThinkProgress, just hours before her husband’s call, breaking into a
guttural sob. Of her
three children, she said her 5-year-old son has “stopped eating” and
her 7-year-old daughter has started to “shut out” conversations since
their father left.
Last month, federal immigration agents took Hervis-Vazquez near his home in Las Vegas, Nevada for a DUI conviction from 2010.
The children are taking it very, very bad.
“They
came to pick him up on July 14 on his way to work. It was a regular
day,” Viviana recalled. “They told him he had a deportation order, which
he got in 2012 but we
didn’t even know about that. We’ve lived here for three years and we
never received anything and don’t even know how he got that. Before we
could even start the paperwork [for his green card], he was detained.”
According
to the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, Hervis-Vazquez had
already completed “all of the necessary courses surrounding his DUI and
paying his fines,”
so the deportation amounted to a form of double punishment for the
Hervis-Vazquez family. Up until his deportation on Thursday,
Hervis-Vazquez had been staying inside an immigration detention center
in Otero, New Mexico.
Since
Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign in June with a speech
suggesting that Mexican immigrants are rapists, drug dealers, and
killers, other Republican
candidates have also embraced extreme rhetoric about undocumented
immigrants. The most recent trend is to suggest that undocumented
immigrants are coming to the U.S. to have so-called “anchor babies” — a
slur used to describe U.S.-born children of foreign-born
parents, who could sponsor family members for legal status at some
point later in life, therefore serving as an “anchor” to help keep their
undocumented parents here.
But
the recent deportation of Hervis-Vazquez — a man who, according to the
Republican candidates, is supposedly moored to the United States because
of his familial ties
to U.S. citizens — defies that assumption.
He’s
not alone. About 9 million individuals in the United States live in
mixed-immigration status families, where at least one parent is
undocumented and one child was
born in the United States.
And many, like Hervis-Vazquez, are at risk of having their family lives torn apart at any moment.
Reyna
Montoya, a 24-year-old high school teacher, lives in such a household.
Originally from Mexico, Montoya and her younger brother are undocumented
immigrants granted
temporary work authorization and legal presence in the country through
President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
program. Her parents are also undocumented. Her 8-year-old sister,
however, is a U.S. citizen.
When
Montoya’s father came back from a work trip to Puerto Rico in 2012, he
was asked if he was a U.S. citizen. When he told the truth, ICE
officials arrested him for
illegal re-entry. He spent nine months in immigration detention and was
released on bond in 2013. But his case is not closed.
“He
has court again next year so we don’t know what’s going to happen,”
Montoya told ThinkProgress. “Now we’re just waiting for someone to
decide what gets to happen to
your family. That person has so much power about what could happen and
the implications of our family if my dad gets deported. Going to see my
dad wouldn’t be possible unless he’s dying. Is my 8-year-old sister
going to visit my dad on her own?”
The
DACA program allows undocumented immigrants like Montoya to travel
internationally, though through limited circumstances. The program
grants some individuals advance
parole to leave the country for education or business trips and also to
visit dying family members.
Going to see my dad wouldn’t be possible unless he’s dying.
For
people like the Hervis-Vazquez and Montoya families, the rhetoric
espoused by the 2016 Republican presidential candidates couldn’t be
further from the truth. They’re
not benefiting from so-called “anchor babies.”
“I
just think it’s unfair and uncalled for and disrespectful,” Viviana
said, when asked how she felt about the loaded term. “No one should be
discriminated against for
where they come from.”
Though
much of the immigration debate is focused on Latino immigrants, the
former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) put a new twist on the term when he
said that “anchor babies”
is a concept that’s “more related to Asian people.” But
mixed-immigration status Asian families aren’t any less shielded from
deportation.
Bati
is a 21-year-old DACA beneficiary who came to the country from Mongolia
with his parents when he was 10 years old. Both of his parents are
undocumented and they work
various jobs in the construction and restaurant industry. His
11-year-old brother is a U.S. citizen. Neither one of his parents are in
deportation proceedings. But they are subjected to long hours and low
wages, as are many other undocumented immigrants —
and they live much of their lives in fear.
“They’re
afraid of going to the hospital and afraid of the police stopping
them,” Bati told ThinkProgress. “If they’re deported, it’ll be me and my
brother.”
People come to the country to start a family. There’s no external motive.
Bati
shrugged off the idea that his younger brother is an “anchor” for his
family. “Why would somebody who comes into this country have a kid just
to become a citizen
in 21 years and even then wait ten years to become a citizen?” he
asked. “That argument doesn’t really make sense. People come to the
country to start a family. There’s no external motive.”
Many
families are caught in an immigration system that indiscriminately
targets people with family connections to the United States. A majority
of the country’s undocumented
population are long-term residents and have have been in the country
for about 13 years. But there have been at least 205,000 parents of
U.S.-born citizens who have been deported between 2010 and 2012.
“When
they talk about ‘anchor babies,’ they’re talking about my sister,”
Montoya said. “We left Mexico because we were running away from all the
violence, the drugs, the
cartels that was happening there. What does an anchor actually mean? It
really hits home and seeing my siblings’ faces and knowing that they’re
being called these names. This is their country and they’re not any
less American than Donald Trump.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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