For undocumented immigrants in places such as Texas and Arizona, the risks of coming out were even greater. The United We Dream affiliates there were more hesitant to join in large, public ceremonies. Arizona was now on the verge of passing some of the toughest state immigration laws in the nation, including a proposal allowing police to stop and check the papers of those they suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents called the measures—which also made failing to carry immigration papers a crime—a welcome mat for racial profiling. Some, including a charismatic young activist named Erika Andiola, joined the public protests despite the growing threats, but for many teens in Arizona, the declaration of “undocumented and unafraid” was still very much wishful thinking.
IT WASN’T EASY to come out in places such as Virginia, either. One afternoon during the spring of her junior year in high school, Hareth lay on the floor at her friend Antonella’s, pretending to do homework. The two had long been close. Antonella was the head of their school’s Latin American Student Association. An outspoken Argentinean with long honey brown hair, she lit up any classroom. Boys and girls alike were drawn to her.
But in recent months, she’d withdrawn, picking fights with Hareth for no reason. That afternoon, neither girl could focus. It felt as if a fog hovered between them. Hareth couldn’t think of a way to cut through. Lately, all the talk at school was of college, and increasingly when conversation turned to the inevitable, Antonella became distracted and irritable.
Hareth was worried about her own future, yet she couldn’t risk sharing her fears with Antonella, so she kept quiet. Hareth didn’t want anyone asking too much about her own family, so she asked little of others.
They couldn’t help it, though, and the discussion about graduation and college inevitably popped into their conversation. Suddenly Antonella burst into tears. You just don’t understand. You’ll never understand, Antonella said.
Try me, Hareth urged.
I’m undocumented, Antonella finally said.
Hareth was flabbergasted. Antonella, so smart, fearless, and popular. Hareth couldn’t believe it. They had spent countless hours together. How could she not have noticed?
Easily, she realized.
Hareth looked at her friend. So am I, she said quietly. The two girls stared at each other, then began to laugh. Soon they were giggling hysterically. It was too crazy even to cry. They had both felt so alone, and now they were not.
Slowly they began to help each other. They learned that neither would be able to fill out a college application for any Virginia school because she would need a Social Security number or Alien Registration Number. Even if a school waived that requirement, neither could afford college without some form of in-state tuition or financial aid, which, like Arizona, Virginia would not offer them. Hareth was a good student but not a star like Dario, not the kind of student who could hope for a full ride anywhere, even under normal circumstances.
At a loss, the girls decided to broach the topic with the one adult who might be able to help: Robert Garcia, a retired engineer who years before had helped design the Washington, DC, Metro, and was the staff adviser for the Latin American Student Association.
They called him “Mr. Garcia,” but behind his back, the beloved straight-talking Texan was known as “Mr. Monopoly” because of his resemblance to the game’s bald, top-hat-sporting icon. Mr. Garcia was well connected in the community and an active member of the League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC. They gambled that they could trust him.
The girls expected him to react with shock, or some surprise, but he showed neither. There are many others like you at Washington-Lee High School, he told them. It wasn’t his place to share names, but he could offer a few groups they might want to reach out to.
BACK ON THE TRAIL, Felipe and his friends now found themselves in high demand from national immigration groups and under greater pressure to back one specific congressional bill. Still, the four tried to keep things light on the trail, belting out the theme songs to their favorite childhood cartoons, especially Dora the Explorer. They watched clips of themselves on the local news and teased each other when they sounded overly angry or strident, subbing in dramatic suspense music or interspersing YouTube squirrel videos to make fun of themselves.
But when they reached Raleigh for the United We Dream meeting, they couldn’t ignore the growing tension over what they should be asking for upon their arrival in Washington. The youth-led coalition had failed to convince the veterans to back the DREAM Act. Now members were at odds over whether to defy the more experienced advocates seeking comprehensive reform and make a push solely for the act. United We Dream organizers wanted Felipe and the rest of the walkers to take a public stand in favor of the more limited bill.
The veteran immigrant activists no longer scoffed at the four. Frank Sharry, who had helped organize the worker caravan back in 2003, had by then founded the nonprofit group America’s Voice, the unofficial communications arm of the immigration reform movement. He hadn’t initially taken the group seriously. But he was beginning to see that the kids might have a thing or two to teach the veterans about communication.
The Washington groups wanted the marchers to use their growing publicity to do network interviews calling for comprehensive immigration reform. Some used the Trail of Dreams for fund-raising requests for broader reform, even though that wasn’t what the group was asking for.
While Felipe and his friends argued over what to do, the veterans lobbied Tania in Chicago, and the emerging United We Dream leaders in New York and Washington, like Cristina Jiménez and Walter Barrientos, not to throw their support behind the stand-alone DREAM Act. If a sizable group of young undocumented immigrants made public that they didn’t think comprehensive reform had a chance, it would doom the broader effort, the veterans pleaded.
Privately, the veterans knew comprehensive reform was a long shot, and they, too, urged Obama to use his executive authority to stop the deportations. But publicly, they focused on getting the president to keep his promise and harness the same energy he’d used to win health care and banking reforms in Congress to push a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws.15
In March, the veterans organized a protest in Washington to pressure lawmakers to introduce a bill.16 More than 100,000 undocumented immigrants and their allies attended, according to news reports at the time, though organizers put the number at twice that. The rally garnered some media attention, but it did little to sway either the president or lawmakers and likely meant far fewer people would come to Washington on May 1 for International Workers’ Day and the completion of the Trail of Dreams.
Felipe, Juan, Gaby, and Carlos were exhausted. They had been walking for nearly ninety days. Each night, as Felipe’s head sank into a new pillow and he closed his eyes, images of mothers crying and anxious children filled his dreams. When they started, it had been about the journey, about making it from one end to the other. Now he thought of Oscar and his sister. He couldn’t let them down.
The group argued more about what they would do when they arrived in Washington. They wanted to take a stand, to end the march with a bang. Felipe and Isabel wanted to participate in a peaceful protest even if it meant getting arrested. But Carlos and Gaby feared deportation. Federal authorities had said they wouldn’t intervene only as long as the youths abided by the law.
“People had all these expectations of what to do. They really wanted us to do something big when we got to Washington, but we couldn’t come to a consensus,” Felipe later recalled.
The young undocumented immigrants had never intentionally participated in civil disobedience to get arrested. Their fear of deportation was too great. Now they wondered, should they do something they knew might force the government to arrest them? Should they try to make it look unintentional? They debated whether they would be more useful to the movement as symbolic detainees or as free activists able to speak out.
While they were in Raleigh, Juan mad
e a phone call that upended everything.
Juan called his sister, who was twenty-five but, due to a congenital birth defect, had a mental capacity closer to that of a twelve-year-old. It quickly became apparent that she was upset.
Where are you? Juan asked.
I’m at the sale, she responded.
What sale? Juan asked. Are you at the mall?
No, his sister replied. She and her father were having the sale.
What are you selling? Juan asked, confused.
His sister furiously explained that people were out front buying everything, even the TV.
Put Dad on the phone! Juan demanded.
Juan’s father explained: he hadn’t wanted to worry his son, but he’d decided to leave the United States and move to Canada.
Juan Rodriguez Sr. had once owned a construction contracting business, employing a group of men he could call at a moment’s notice to do a job. But that had all ended in 2007. After years of an occasional ticket for driving without a license, his record had caught up with him. Another ticket for driving without a license in Hillsborough County had become a felony, and the family couldn’t afford to bail him out.17 He had spent six months in jail, missing the holidays, the birth of his youngest daughter, and Juan’s high school graduation.
After that, he was terrified to drive again. He lost work, relying on friends for rides to take him to the odd construction job.
Around that time, Juan’s sister was also aging out of the public services she’d long received to help her live as independently as possible. In Canada, the public health system would be more likely to help her. Maybe there his sister could get support, even residency, his father reckoned, and then he could find legal status as her guardian.
Juan was floored. He’d been responsible for his sister since he had been nine, cooked the family meals since he was eleven. He had never been allowed a voice in the house until he’d moved out. Finally, just as he and his father had gotten into something of a groove, the family was leaving.
Juan’s father promised to come through and say good-bye. They would meet the group a week later in Henderson, North Carolina. Juan Sr. had little to fear about driving now; he was on his way out.
As Juan awaited his family, the group received more bad news.
On March 12, eighteen-year-old Miami Dade College student Leslie Cocche was waiting for her train at a Tri-Rail station in Broward County, backpack in tow, just as she did every day to make the hour-long commute to classes. Several immigration agents approached her, asking about her immigration status and requesting her identification papers. When the Peruvian native, who had come with her family to the United States at age ten, couldn’t provide the right documents, the agents handcuffed her and took her to the Broward Transitional Center, placing her into deportation proceedings.18
Leslie had been waiting for the same train Felipe had taken for years to attend Miami Dade College. That easily could have been me, he thought. His frustrations bubbled over. It felt as though the president had just been lying to them, assuring immigration advocates that DHS was now focused only on detaining “criminals.” Leslie was not a criminal.
As their arrival in Washington grew closer, Felipe and the others began to worry more and more that despite all the publicity, they would arrive, attend a rally or two, and go home with nothing gained. The students turned inward, against one another, picking up on months’ worth of slights and ignored insults: who had walked more, who was doing more of the grunt work.
After Juan’s father came to say good-bye in Henderson, Juan snapped. The entire group began arguing once again, and suddenly Juan announced he was done. He would go to Canada with his dad. Here he was, walking thousands of miles to keep people from being deported, and he couldn’t even protect his friends or his father.
I created this, and I can destroy it, he thought as he laced up his shoes, just as he’d done the night he’d decided to create the walk.
Carlos insisted he’d keep walking by himself if he had to. He wasn’t about to turn back. But Juan was adamant. He was done.
He turned to Felipe. “You’re coming with me to Canada, right?”
“No.” Felipe said it quietly. He couldn’t leave. He had given his word, and that was more important than money in the bank, his mother had always said. And actually, it was pretty much his only money in the bank.
They had said they would walk to Washington, and they would walk to Washington.
Juan stared at Felipe in surprise. No, he would not compromise. He was done. Then he stopped and sat down. He could not leave Felipe. He could not leave his friends, the movement. Okay, he would go to Washington. The four looked at one another. They hadn’t felt this alone and impotent since they’d begun the walk.
It wasn’t the last time their commitment to one another would be tested. For the most part, Felipe and Juan had kept their relationship discreet along the trail. They were being hosted by an array of organizations, some Catholic, some Southern Baptist, not known for being particularly welcoming to gay men. It was a deal they had made in order to be able to do the walk, and they knew their actions (or lack of action) made it easier for their ground team to find them housing along the way.
At one point, they had all agreed to donate blood to make a statement about immigrants’ willingness to give back to their community. Juan had pointed out that if he were honest about his personal history as a man who’d had sex with other men, he would be rejected as a donor. He wasn’t about to go back into the closet for a blood donation, he told the group, and they agreed he should do what he felt was right. But Felipe was afraid. He didn’t want to be outed publicly. “Do what you need to do,” Juan told him. When the nurse did his intake, Felipe declined to mention his relationship with Juan and offered up his arm.
But Felipe couldn’t refuse the LGBTQ blogger who asked to interview the two in North Carolina, and it was then that Felipe and Juan publicly came out as a couple. In an early-April blog, Felipe wrote for the first time along the Trail about his feelings for Juan.
“The Trail of DREAMs is a loud cry for justice, but on a more personal level, it’s been an affirmation of my identity,” he wrote. “. . . I am a man who dreams of one day being considered equal in the eyes of society next to my partner, Juan Rodriguez—the wonderful man I fear being separated from at any moment when all I wish is to spend the rest of my life with him.”19
Some of the solidarity groups began to take notice and brought it to the attention of the logistics team, whose members were themselves exhausted and working around the clock to ensure safe landing spots for the walkers each day. Everyone was on edge, even more so because in Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer was poised to sign her state’s harsh new immigration bill known as SB 1070, which had already inspired copycat versions in legislatures across the country.
As the group reached Arlington, Virginia, in late April, Juan and Felipe got word that their hosts would prefer them to keep their relationship quiet. Juan spoke to one of the women on the logistics team. She was sorry to have to ask them to keep it quiet, but she had barely slept in days. She’d called some hundreds of places to get them shelter each night over the course of their four-month journey. She was running out of options and needed to find them safe places for just one more week. She was volunteering her time, neglecting her own children. And now, rather than being grateful, Felipe and Juan were complaining because they couldn’t hold hands in public.
“I have been notified that one of the group’s associate organizers has ‘kindly’ requested that Felipe and I not ‘act gay’ at the arranged social gatherings on Sunday. In fact, it is ‘preferable’ if any sign of my relationship to Felipe is not mentioned or made visible in any manner to those who will be present,” Juan wrote in a hastily typed response to the Trail’s support team. “I don’t know if this hurt me the most, or if I was more wounded by the fact that someone from my own team relayed this information to me.”20
It made Juan physically sick
to always be hiding his true self. Felipe had tried to kill himself in response to rejection over his sexuality. Maybe if he hadn’t also been so vulnerable because of his immigration status, things would have been different. But this was their reality. Felipe remembered the time early on the trip when he and Juan had been playfully shoving each other as they arrived on the outskirts of Athens, Georgia. It was about 10 a.m., the air was cool, but the sun was already high.
A beige sedan swerved toward them.
“FAGGOTS! FAGGOTS!” a man yelled.
Juan pushed Felipe out of the way just in time. “If we hadn’t moved, he would have hit us,” Juan said.
He remembered the time they’d been asked to give blood and he had been afraid to be honest.
This time he would not be silent.
After months of talking about human dignity for all, talking about civil rights, and urging immigrants to take pride in their own stories, no matter what they were, he felt a visceral pain at being told he could share all stories but this one. Felipe, Juan, Gaby, and Carlos sat down together. They had long ago decided that Gaby would speak for them in most public places. They wanted her voice represented as the only woman, and they also recognized that she was often perceived as less of a threat and was better able to communicate their message.
Gaby said no; this time it would be up to Juan and Felipe to speak. They agreed that Felipe would talk at the church in Arlington about immigration and civil rights—and also about homophobia. The four walked into the meeting, with a renewed sense of united purpose. Before them, several hundred people, black, white, and Latino, sat at U-shaped tables to allow attendees to eat lunch and listen at the same time. A young woman who lived in Arlington got up and told her story. She was facing deportation, and she was terrified. She needed the community’s help. Then Felipe stood up. Now it was his turn to seal the deal—for the young Virginian immigrant, for Juan, for himself, for the rest of the group, for the millions who couldn’t be heard.
The Making of a Dream Page 13
