Trapped by the law

Behind the steering wheel, Sandra is cautious. She doesn’t know what will happen if she makes one wrong move.

Driving without a license would earn her enough trouble with the police, but her secret is more serious — Sandra is an undocumented immigrant. Flashing red and blue lights in the rearview mirror could mean deportation, the end of her family’s life in Bloomington.

“We feel so frustrated that one of these days some police or something asks for my driver’s license, and I don’t have it,” she said.

She remembers the time one of her friends was pulled over. He was a father of three with a business in town. He had lived in Bloomington for more than 10 years. His taillight was out. He was almost deported.

It’s a constant fear for Sandra and her husband, Israel, who left Juarez, Mexico, together in 2010.

They both have college degrees, Sandra’s in communications and Israel’s in graphic design. Before they left Juarez, just across the border from Texas, they had professional careers.

Four years after driving across the border, Sandra and Israel still live here. They shop at Wal-Mart, stress about entertaining family members during the holidays and drive a Subaru Outback with a yellow “Baby on board” sign hanging in the window.

Every day, they face the challenges of outcasts in American society: the fear of a police officer asking to see a driver’s license, confused looks from passersby when they speak Spanish in public, putting their dream of owning a business on hold while they clean 10 houses every week to earn a living.

Across the country, they’re joined by millions of other undocumented workers waiting for the government to overhaul an immigration system. It’s reform that elected leaders on both sides of the political aisle say doesn’t work.

“We hope that immigration reform comes soon,” Sandra said. “Maybe one of these days.”

* * *

Immigration challenges the fundamental nature of American society, posing some of the most basic and yet most difficult questions the political process has to answer:

What is an American? And who gets to be one?

In Washington, D.C., stalled attempts to overhaul the system have faced divisive responses to even deeper questions about how immigration could change America.

What happens to our national infrastructure — community services and social programs — when the nature of the groups it serves changes?

How do we deter illegal immigration, and what do we do about the estimated 11.7 million undocumented workers living here today?

For Bloomington’s director of Latino outreach, Daniel Soto, the answers to these questions are simple.

He says the U.S. needs to reform its immigration system and create a path to citizenship for the millions who have entered the country illegally. The sooner the better.

Daniel estimates there are 200 to 300 undocumented immigrants living in Bloomington. They’re a small minority, and unlike in big cities, there are fewer services available and fewer people who understand their situation. There are no official counts, but he’s confident he’s right.

“I pretty much can say I know almost everyone in that category,” he said.

Daniel is a Costa Rican immigrant and a U.S. citizen. He’s often a resource for immigrants, particularly those whose primary language is Spanish.

“I will say 90 to 99 percent would be very happy to participate and to pay their fair share into the system,” he said. “It’s just that they are not allowed right now.”

Daniel and other immigration advocates welcomed a bipartisan immigration reform bill passed by the U.S. Senate in June.

Supporters say it addressed every issue and answered questions raised by both Republicans and Democrats. It called for greater border security, amnesty for millions of immigrants who had entered the country illegally and tougher restrictions for employers who try to hire undocumented workers.

Yet when the bill reached the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans blocked its passage, arguing instead to handle the wide swath of issues it addressed individually and more specifically. Before long, immigration reform was swept under the rug as more pressing matters — the government shutdown and the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act website — took center stage.

“These people are here already,” Daniel said. “These people have children, they go to school, they participate in many ways. Giving them something legal is just a step to be sure that these people will be secure.”

* * *

Sandra and Israel’s hometown is ground zero for the drug cartels. Juarez provides a link to the United States through El Paso, Texas, across the Rio Grande. Cartel violence is prominent. Shootings and kidnappings and beheadings tear the city apart.

The year before Sandra and Israel left, an average of seven homicide cases were recorded every day in the border city, making it one of the most dangerous places in the world.

“It’s like the eye of the hurricane,” Sandra said. “The city was like madness, crazy, because the cartels, they fight each other. And the people, we are in the middle.”

When Sandra’s mother was pregnant with her, she moved from Los Angeles back to Mexico. Sandra was almost born an American citizen, and her mother regrets not waiting to have her child in the United States. Sandra and Israel did not yet have a child when they left Juarez, but they knew they wouldn’t want to build their family there.

So Sandra and Israel decided to leave and join his mother and aunt in Bloomington.

Juarez was too dangerous. The United States would be safer than Mexico. Better schools. More opportunity.

They never applied for green cards. Instead, they got tourist visas valid for short-term visits during the next 10 years, packed the car and drove off toward their new life.

“We don’t have anything to lose, right?” Sandra said. “It’s like an adventure.”

Without stopping for the night, they drove. Behind them were family and friends in Juarez and a life they’d built together. It felt like home, but it was never truly safe. Ahead lay the unknown, the Midwestern city where they would try to fit in — and pray they’d never be forced to return to Mexico.

Six states and 24 hours later, the little family arrived in Bloomington. It was late on a Sunday night in February, and snow fell on the windshield of the Ford Explorer.

U.S. law required them to return to Mexico, visas in hand, after six months, but they stayed in Indiana for the next four years.

Not long after, their now-2-year-old daughter, Nina, was born. She’s the reason the family has stayed in the United States. Sandra misses Mexico, misses her family, misses home, but she wants Nina to grow up with an “American life with Hispanic heritage.”

When Sandra talks about Nina and the fear of being sent back to Juarez, she stops mid-sentence, her eyes brimming with tears.

“We feel trapped some days. I feel trapped.”

Nina was born in Bloomington. She’s an American citizen with a lifelong right to live and work and learn here.

“I don’t care if I need to clean houses,” she said. “Only for her to have a really good school and she’s going to be safe. That’s only what I want.”

* * *

A run-in with Bloomington police could be all it takes to throw Sandra and her family into the immigration legal system.

It could mean being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for finding and prosecuting undocumented immigrants. Sandra and Israel would wait in federal custody for a hearing and then wait again for an airplane back across the border.

But limited resources mean the agency cannot possibly take action against every undocumented immigrant in the country.

ICE agents focus on removing convicted criminals, recent border-crossers and threats to the system, Montenegro said.

“In order to better prioritize the agency’s limited resources on targeting criminal aliens and those that put public safety at risk, ICE has issued guidance for ICE law enforcement personnel and attorneys regarding their authority to exercise discretion when appropriate,” ICE spokesperson Gail Montenegro said.

So for a family like Sandra and Israel’s, the fear of deportation might never become a reality. The man hours and money that would need to be spent tracking down, detaining, trying and deporting a couple and their daughter in Bloomington, Indiana, might not be worth it.

But the fear will always be there. There are no guarantees.

* * *

Sandra remembers a conversation she had with her husband over their lunch at Golden Corral on the west side.

An old woman sitting at the next table turned to them.

What are you saying? The woman asked.

Sandra and Israel looked at her, confused.

Yeah, you’re speaking something strange.

Israel responded. It was Spanish, he said.

Spanish? What’s that? The woman asked. I never leave Bloomington. I was born here, I live here and I’ll die here.

The woman’s response surprised Sandra.

“It’s like, hello, there’s another part of the world,” Sandra said.

Finding a job, communicating fluently and fitting into a Midwestern community presented challenges that surprised Sandra and Israel.

Friends and family told Sandra she might not be able to find work in her field. In Juarez, she worked in public relations, sold advertisements for a newspaper and did marketing for a funeral home.

Here, she sent out her résumé in search of office work and jobs at local publications. She waited for responses that never came.

When the phone rang for her first job offer, two months after their arrival, she took it. She had applied to McDonald’s using someone else’s name and Social Security number. On paper, Sandra never worked there.

At her job at McDonald’s and her husband’s job at Wendy’s, they learned more English, building on the basic knowledge they gained as students in Mexico.

“In school it’s the grammar and the subject and the verb, and in real life nobody speaks like that, right?” Sandra said. “It became like English classes.”

To each other and to Nina, Sandra and Israel speak Spanish.

“She’s in daycare, so with all the kids and the teacher, it’s all English, but at home, it’s all Spanish,” Sandra said. “Only Spanish.”

* * *

Not long after she started working at McDonald’s, Sandra’s mother-in-law — who the couple came to live with in the U.S. — decided to go back to Mexico. Sandra and her husband took over the house-cleaning business that her mother-in-law had developed during her 10 years living in Bloomington.

They have about 10 clients who they see every week.

“It’s nice because all these people know my mother-in-law,” she said. “We have the key of the house, sometimes we take care of the cat, so it’s more like a relation of trust.”

Although Sandra and Israel don’t mind cleaning houses, it’s not what they want to do long-term, and it’s not how they expected to use their college degrees. But they see it as a better alternative than returning to Juarez.

Eventually, they’re going to open their own business here in Bloomington, a restaurant that serves the food they miss most from their home country, authentic, home-cooked Mexican food.

“Really, really Mexican food. Really Mexican. Homemade,” she said. “Because all that Taco Bell and Qdoba is nothing.”

Or maybe it’ll be a video game store. That’s what Israel wants.

Right now, though, their plan can’t move forward unless Congress passes an immigration reform bill that allows undocumented workers like Sandra and Israel an opportunity for amnesty.

But despite the problems, despite the fear, despite being so far from home, Sandra says it’s worth it. They do it for Nina.

Follow reporter Michael Auslen on Twitter @MichaelAuslen.