Jose was feeling good about his chances to stay in the U.S.
After all, he and his wife Maria have been here for two decades. Their three children, all U.S. citizens, are in high school. Jose, 41, is self-employed. No criminal record. His pastor calls the couple true Bible believers. On top of that, they’ve been extremely frugal; their house is fully paid for.
Editor’s note: This 3-part audio series uses pseudonyms to protect family members who asked to not be identified for fear of retaliation. As a general practice the Institute for Public Service Reporting does not use pseudonyms but is doing so here because of the sensitive nature of these stories, which shine light on the plight of many immigrants. To learn more about this family, read our original story from last May.
“Yo estaba súper, súper relajado,” the Central American immigrant said in his native Spanish. I was super, super relaxed, he says.
But a month into his detention at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana, his wife gave him an update from his attorney. He remembers the bad news.
“Once she told me ’Nothing can be done,’ then, in mind everything practically changed,’’ Jose said in a phone interview earlier this fall. “It changed in a very drastic way, because you realize and tell yourself, ‘Well, if nothing can be done then, why am I still here?’ ”
The “here” he speaks of is the Richwood Correctional Center, a for-profit detention facility in Monroe, Louisiana. It’s faced a series of allegations in recent years regarding unsanitary conditions and physical abuse. La Salle Corrections, the private company that operates Richwood, did not respond to a reporter’s repeated requests for comment. Efforts to reach ICE for these stories were unsuccessful.
For Jose, the worst part of staying at Richwood was the temperature.
“During the day, there’s the sun, and that is what keeps you warm. The sun warms you up. So, if you sleep during the day, you could get better sleep during the day than at night,’’ he said. “To tell you the truth, it is disgustingly cold. So cold that you feel like it breaks all your bones.”
Gradually, his spirits dropped.
“The truth is I felt depressed. There were times when I didn’t want to get up at all. One day, I slept the entire day,’’ he said.
So, when Jose learned that he was being deported, he felt some relief. On September 23, he was put on a plane with 100 to 140 other immigrants, all shackled and guarded by 30 to 40 Department of Homeland Security employees.
“Chains on the feet, a chain around the belly, and from the same chains on the belly, from there, they put on the so-called handcuffs,” Jose said.
Despite his predicament, Jose clung to his faith.
“Us, who believe in God, we hope for a miracle until the last hour. I told myself, ‘As long as we are not in (Central America), something could happen, a miracle. This plane could be returned, and I could get off it in the United States’ … But truthfully, even while you are in the air, you never lose hope to get back to your family.”
This is not how Jose imagined returning to a country he left twenty years earlier. (The Institute for Public Service Reporting is not naming his country of origin in order to protect the identity of family members who remain in the U.S.)
When the plane finally landed in Central America, its passengers had mixed emotions. Some clapped. Some screamed.
For better or worse, Jose was back home. He’s now living with relatives in a house he paid for over many years in the event this would happen.
Back in Memphis, his three teenagers are making the best of the situation, settling into routines of friends and school.
Maria had considered staying here without authorization until the children graduate. But with all the pressure from the Memphis Safe Task Force — the multiple federal agencies looking for undocumented immigrants — she’s changed her mind.
“As a family, I think we’ve already accepted that this is no longer our place,” she said.
Now, they’re tying up loose ends, planning, packing, and selling their house.
Their teenage son, Alex, sees the move as an extended visit to a foreign country.
“Me knowing that (it) is inevitable, or anything like that, about me going to my parents’ country, I feel like it’s probably an opportunity to learn different stuff that (I) can’t learn here yet,” he said.
Liliana, Maria’s 18-year-old daughter, will stay behind to finish her last year of high school, then go to college. She’s still looking for a temporary home.
“I’m going to miss arguing with my brothers, obviously, and being able to do stuff with them, and having the permanent support in a sense,” she said.
For this family and other Memphis immigrant families, the forced choice between hiding or leaving the country feels like a betrayal.
Over the last decade, Hispanics have moved into the city in large numbers while Whites and Blacks have moved out. Mauricio Calvo with the nonprofit advocacy group Latino Memphis said the aggressive immigration enforcement could have a lasting negative impact.
“The only approach that we’re seeing is … a punitive enforcement that is breaking families apart, that is breaking our economy, that is traumatizing an entire generation of people in … Memphis and across the country,” Calvo said.
Even Hispanic families with legal status are now re-thinking whether to live here, he said.
“If this city is going to continue to thrive or attempt to thrive, it’s going to have to include the Latino community,’’ he said. “And these measures are either deporting people or motivating people to leave, and that’s going to have tremendous consequences.”
Although Jose’s American dream has vanished, he said he remains grateful for the time he and his family spent in this country.
“God forgive the United States for what they are doing,” he said, “because this is not about bad people in the country … it’s about politics.”
Editor’s Note: Latino Memphis made a $10,000 gift to the Institute for Public Service Reporting in November. The Institute maintains a firewall between editorial decisions and all sources of revenue. Acceptance of support does not give donors any control over our editorial product; neither does it constitute any implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services or opinions. For more details see our editorial independence policy.
