Monday, January 16, 2017

Family Life Under the Stigma of Undocumented Immigration

By Rebecca Schneider, CounterPunch
January 4, 2017

“You have reached the voicemail box of…”

“You have reached the voicemail box of…”

“You have reached the voicemail box of…”

Panic set in. I was supposed to get dinner with him at Chili’s, my pregnancy cravings running wild for those honey chipotle chicken crispers. We had just talked about it on the phone less than an hour before. After a few minutes of waiting in the car, his family saw me, came outside and said, “He was pulled over by the police driving home in the work truck and they took him.” I sped back home, tears streaming down my face, and frantically told my parents what was going on.

We rushed to the police station, even though he told me not to come. He didn’t want me to see him there under those circumstances. When we got there, an officer told us he didn’t have any documentation, so there was no way they could release him. I went back to his apartment, scrambling to find anything I could that would show that he had lived here a long time – his high school diploma, his bartending license, some cash he had, thinking maybe it would help. When I got back, the officer sneered, “I couldn’t release him if I wanted to.”[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/04/family-life-under-the-stigma-of-undocumented-immigration/

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