I was at home on my day off from the restaurant when I heard Sheriff Joe Arpaio was arresting undocumented workers. Two armed men with badges showed up on my front porch. When they asked for Hugo, I slammed the door and tried to think of an escape, but I didn’t get far. My neighborhood was full of armed officers and flashing police lights. All my neighbors were out on the street.
I called my wife, Leslie, who was four months pregnant with our first child. She told me not to open the door again, and she would come home right away. I felt so little and helpless inside my house, running from room to room, looking out the window.
When Leslie arrived, the officers stopped her; they wouldn’t let her in our house and said they would enter with force if she opened the door. She was crying, and the officers were screaming. I came out with my hands up.
That was the day I was arrested, and charged with identity theft and using falsified documents to work. And that was the day my world ended. Now, I face deportation and permanent separation from my wife and two children.
I was born in a small farming town in Mexico and came to the United States without papers at 10 years old. The lingo for people like me is a “Dreamer” (a reference to the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, or Dream, Act). I don’t remember much about crossing over. Maybe I’ve tried to forget about it. But I remember a man driving our family through the desert and lying on the car’s floorboard with my siblings so we wouldn’t be seen. When we reached the border, we walked across and found ourselves in Douglas, Arizona.
My father had been in Arizona several months, doing construction, so what I mostly remember about that day is how excited I was to see my dad again. I had missed him so much. We celebrated at his apartment in Phoenix. Our family was together again, and our new life had begun.
I knew we were undocumented, but I didn’t yet understand what it meant. I was still in fifth grade. It wasn’t until high school that I began to really see how I was different. Like when my friends got their driver’s licenses, and I couldn’t. Or when I tried to join the military, but was told I wouldn’t be able to. That’s when I started to realize what life without immigration papers was going to be like.
I started to feel pretty bad about myself, too, like I wasn’t good enough, because I wasn’t like the other kids. I couldn’t ask a girl out on a date, because I couldn’t drive. What if she wanted to see an R-rated movie, and I didn’t have the proper ID to go?
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