A month ago in Los Angeles, I watched two women get into a fight in a line at a gas station. They both looked about 30 and roughly the same weight — American vs. Latina. The American said she deserved to go first, before all those shitty Latinos. Personally, I don’t mind standing in line for two hours because in my country, Cuba, we’re accustomed to getting up early to buy food and returning home 12 hours later; stores there often have more demand than supply, and the lines that form can last for days. The Latina, however, was offended by the American, who was trying to pay before us. She yelled at her in Spanish, calling her all kinds of things, and they ended up pulling each other’s hair. “ICE is coming for y’all!” the American woman shouted, trying to fix her hair after the fight ended.
That’s how deranged the United States has become.
In February, I joined a protest for immigrant rights at La Placita Olvera, a very popular place in LA that pays homage to the city’s Mexican heritage. Latinos blocked off several streets and marched carrying equality signs while rancheras music played from their cars. Some of them told me they hoped that all the hatred that is running through the country would subside. A Chicano boy in his 20s holding a sign with the phrase “Chingue a su madre la migra,” which basically means “Fuck ICE” told me that nothing would change. I believed him more. Strength is supposed to come from the people, and the people voted for Donald Trump. Immigrants here have so little, and undocumented immigrants have nothing — neither rights nor power.
Immigrants here have so little, and undocumented immigrants have nothing — neither rights nor power.
MY FRIEND B is so depressed that a bump has appeared on her head. She asked if this happens to me, too, but it doesn’t. I get pimples from stress, but never bumps. She thinks it’s her brain growing from worry. From the moment she wakes up, she says it could be her last day in Los Angeles. Every time she uses the car to go to Walmart or to work, every time she takes her son to the park, she worries. B is smarter than a smartphone and nobler than any dolphin. She’s an immigrant who lacks a Social Security number and has no way to get one. Her son was born here, and his life is here, and she’s afraid to take him to her country, because it would be so difficult for him. Her problems are mounting, and her brain churns them like clothes in a washing machine. Maybe her own mental mechanism created that round short circuit on her skull. The doctors don’t know what has caused it.
V woke me up at 5 a.m. last week. I answered the phone. She was crying; I could barely understand what she was saying. She had come to the U.S. with humanitarian parole, under a program implemented by Joe Biden, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services just sent her a letter notifying her that her benefits were expiring. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services invited her to deport herself voluntarily. If she doesn’t go, she may be persecuted by ICE and forcibly returned to Nicaragua. She’s starting to build a new life in the states; she has a job and two small children. Now, Donald Trump is going to cancel her work permit, and if she is fired, she will be left high and dry. But if she stays, she’ll have to work with fake documents and live in hiding forever.
As a journalist, I spend my days reading the news, writing and interviewing people. I hear somber stories, and I’m unable to share them; the very people who talk to me will not allow me to. A German TV channel commissioned me to do five interviews with undocumented people. They wanted them to discuss their fear and describe how they cope with it. I told the channel’s producers that it was a rather complex assignment: If people are afraid to talk to a newspaper under a pseudonym and without photos being taken, they are not very likely to appear on a TV channel. The producers recommended that I film the people I interviewed with their backs to the camera. I spent two weeks trying to get interviews, unsuccessfully. “I won’t solve any problems by talking to you, quite the opposite,” a Mexican guy told me. “I’m going through the process of legalizing myself. They can also recognize me even when my back is turned,” a Colombian woman told me. “When this government wants to catch you, they catch you.”
We immigrants are terrified. Though I’m legally in this country, I have panic attacks like the ones I had in Cuba, when the police arrested me because independent journalism is illegal there. Last night, I was driving down the highway with a patrol car behind me. I maintained the exact speed limit the entire trip. My car’s speedometer didn’t move from 65 mph; it was less shaky than I was. I took the exit, and the patrol car continued straight ahead. I breathed a sigh of relief. I’ve heard about people being deported for running stop signs and American citizens being detained simply because they look Latino.
I’m afraid of being stopped, of having my green card canceled for no reason and being sent back to Cuba; of having my undocumented friends deported; of using the real names of the people I’ve mentioned here in case ICE identifies them and comes hunting for them.
The protagonist of the Cuban zombie movie Juan de los Muertos says that Cubans are all survivors. We immigrants in the United States are the same. Right now, at 11 p.m., as I write this, I feel like I have just survived another day among possible predators. My friends tell me they feel that way, too. They survive each day, one by one, praying that ICE doesn’t find them for the next four years, until Trump is out of power, and then America can become great again. Assuming, of course, that Trump doesn’t change the Constitution and get himself re-elected for another term. There’s plenty of time for that — just as there’s still enough time at 11 p.m. for them to break down your door and deport you. In the end, maybe the woman at the gas station was right: ICE is coming for all of us.
We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
