Felipe looked out at the pastors in the audience, the other allies. He thought of what he needed to say to convince them to help this young woman. These were the people who could save her if they flooded congressional offices and immigration officials’ telephones and email accounts with enough messages. These were the people they needed to come to the rally they’d planned for when they crossed the Potomac River into Washington.
Felipe began to talk about David and Goliath. He knew the Bible backwards and forwards from his church days, and he’d always been drawn to the story of David, the youngest son, who as a teen had slayed the giant. Some versions of the story put David at age fourteen when he killed Goliath, the same age Felipe had been when he arrived in Miami. It was the story he most identified with. His passion worked its magic.
The speech earned foot-stomping applause.
But Felipe felt sick. He had not mentioned Juan. He had not mentioned homophobia.
Afterward, they all posed for pictures, smiling, with arms around each other.
As they walked out of the center, Juan leaned over. “You betrayed me,” he whispered. Felipe’s heart cracked. Then they both forced smiles once more and were whisked off to the next event.
6
ARRIVAL AND THE AFTERGLOW
Immigrant leader Tania Unzueta speaks to a reporter as part of a “coming out of the shadows” event in Chicago, Illinois, March 2011. (SARAH-JI/LOVE AND STRUGGLE PHOTOS)
Felipe and the other walkers arrived in the Washington area almost a week early, having covered ground faster than they planned. Now they had to wait. They were relieved to have a few days to rest but anxious, after so many months, to finish what they’d started. It was hard to believe they’d come this far. Felipe thought back to how close the whole thing had come to falling apart in North Carolina. They had gained national and international attention, winning the respect of many of the naysayers. Yet back in the nation’s capital, they were once again at the mercy of the Washington players.
And within that circle of powerful change makers, chaos reigned. A few days before, Senator Lindsey Graham,1 the South Carolina Republican who had stepped in to lead the GOP immigration reform effort in the Senate, dropped his support.2 He had failed to convince even a handful in his party to join him on the remake of the 2007 comprehensive bill. Some Democrats in the House pushed ahead even as they knew that without Republican support, it was likely doomed.
Democrats held a sizable majority in Congress, but not all of them were on board with comprehensive reform, and with dozens of contested Democratic House seats up for grabs in elections that year, they knew they would see defections within their party on the bill. They needed at least some GOP votes to get past a filibuster.
On April 28, four days before they’d officially walk into the nation’s capital, Felipe, Gaby, Juan, and Carlos drove into the city, parked their RV, and held a news conference at the National Press Club,* accompanied by Cheryl Little, who’d come up to provide support. As they walked toward the Press Club for their unofficial arrival in Washington, reporters flanked the four.
“You are walking so fast,” someone called out.
“Sorry, we’re used to it,” Gaby said with an apologetic grin.3
They were peppered with the same questions they had been asked all along the trail and answered reporters distractedly, without breaking stride.
“Are you really undocumented?” one journalist asked.
“Yes,” a weary Gaby replied to the interviewer. “I actually lost my status to do this.” By taking leave from Miami Dade College, she had lost her student visa.
As Felipe neared Constitution Avenue, someone asked him and the others if they’d achieved their goal. “No,” they answered—not until the administration took action to stop deporting those without serious criminal records.
“If they don’t do anything, Latinos will not come out and vote in November,” Carlos called out.
Someone asked Carlos if he feared being detained. “I lost the fear of being deported by walking 1,500 miles,” he responded.
That same day, aboard Air Force One, Obama appeared to officially signal the death knell for a comprehensive bill in rare casual comments to the traveling press corps. “We’ve gone through a very tough year, and I’ve been working Congress very hard, so I know there may not be an appetite immediately to dive into another controversial issue,” he told them.4
The president may have spoken the truth about Congress’s unwillingness to act, but his comments infuriated immigrants’ Washington advocates and their Democratic allies. Only months before, the president had made an impassioned speech for comprehensive reform. Esther Olavarria, who had worked to salvage and update Ted Kennedy’s bipartisan bill under the leadership of Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer, was crushed.
“Even presidents have bad days,” his top adviser on immigration, Cecilia Muñoz, told the advocates in an attempt to explain the public torpedoing of any hope for comprehensive reform that year.
While the Democrats continued with the Washington Kabuki theater-like ritual of presenting their immigration bill, even though it had little chance of passing, Felipe and the walkers remained true to their original mission, sporting T-shirts urging people to text the president to stop deporting young students and their families.
The walkers had asked to meet President Obama and to deliver more than 30,000 signatures they and their allies had collected in support of their request for deferred action for those who would be eligible for the DREAM Act. Through the veteran activists, they got word the president had declined but would send his trusted aide Valerie Jarrett. The four students refused. They had walked 1,500 miles to meet the president. They tried to drop the petitions off with the Secret Service outside the White House, but the agents wouldn’t accept them, either. Things were not going as planned. The day before, upon returning to their RV, they had found the door wide open, their laptops gone.5 Gaby dialed the police, but when they asked for her name, she briefly hesitated, still frightened of what would happen if she gave it.
Still, they had reason for hope. Although outwardly, comprehensive reform remained the focus, behind the scenes there was growing support for deferred action. The week before the Florida students had arrived in Washington, Durbin and Republican senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, had sent a letter to DHS secretary Janet Napolitano urging her department to issue a broad deferred action order for DREAM Act–eligible immigrants.
The senators expressed appreciation for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s help in addressing individual DREAMer cases. “However, deferred action for DREAM Act students would be more efficient than the current ad hoc system,” the senators wrote. They noted that too often the decision to defer action came as a last-minute reprieve. “The decision to grant deferred removal in a DREAM Act case is frequently made shortly before the removal date. This is an inefficient use of limited resources.”
What they didn’t describe was the havoc such uncertainty wreaked on the lives of students, who each year received a letter confirming another year of deferred action, often only after much prodding, as in the case of Marie Gonzalez. Each summer, as the July Fourth weekend approached, she mentally and physically prepared for her ten-year exile, only to have the whole thing called off at the eleventh hour.6
The letter boosted the students’ spirits. Someone had been listening. Inside the White House, experts quietly stepped up their research into what the executive branch could do, including ending the workplace raids and attempting to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to refine the priorities of who should be detained. But the president believed in working through the democratic process, Cecilia Muñoz maintained. And that meant exhausting all possibilities within Congress.
On May 1, Felipe, Juan, Gaby, and Carlos walked across Arlington Memorial Bridge into Washington beneath clear blue skies. Hundreds of supporters followed them. Some had walked 250 miles in solidarity. Others had taken buses to join them. Many had ris
ked being stopped along the way by immigration officials. Felipe and his friends had shadows under their eyes. Their hair was bleached, their faces were sunburned. They were exhausted.
But they had made it. Tears filled Felipe’s eyes. We did it. We actually did it!
By the time they reached the White House, some 5,000 people had gathered. Many held signs against the deportations and in support of the DREAM Act, but there was also a strong showing in reaction to a new cause for alarm: Arizona SB 1070. Anger among immigrants over the Arizona laws had coalesced into May Day marches around the country, which had overshadowed the students’ arrival in national media coverage but also gave urgency to their cause.
The protests focused on SB 1070, scheduled to go into effect in late July, which required local law enforcement officers to determine the immigration status of a person if the officers had “reasonable suspicion” to believe the person was in the country illegally. Immigrant rights groups argued the law was an open invitation for racial profiling of Latinos, Asian Americans, and Middle Eastern Americans. Much like the Sensenbrenner bill, the law included penalties for harboring and transporting undocumented immigrants.
Also like the Sensenbrenner bill, it had once again scared people onto the streets in some seventy cities across the country.7 The marches were smaller than the massive demonstrations of 2006, but they were focused in their call to oppose the law and stop similar proposals from passing in other states. According to the New York Times, at least 50,000 people took to the streets in Los Angeles on May 1, 2010, with 25,000 in Dallas, and more than 10,000 each in Chicago and Milwaukee.
In Washington, Felipe, Juan, Gaby, and Carlos each left their worn trail shoes and a rose at the gates of the White House around midday. The sun beamed down from the clear sky. Oscar, the little boy they’d met in South Carolina, had come to DC with his parents. Thanks to Gaby’s quick efforts and work by the team’s lawyers, his father was in the process of getting deferred action. Oscar greeted the group with a hug.
The four students stood shoulder to shoulder in their matching T-shirts yet seemed oddly disconnected from the scene. They sat apart as nearly three dozen protesters, including Democratic representative Luis Gutiérrez of Chicago, were detained for sitting on the White House fence. The crowd cheered in support of the congressman and the others led away by police, hands fastened behind their backs with white plastic police ties.
Among those arrested were Joshua Hoyt, the head of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; Ali Noorani of the centrist National Immigration Forum; Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change; and Gustavo Torres, who welcomed the walkers at his nonprofit CASA de Maryland organization. They hadn’t all supported the four walkers from the beginning. Some had been downright skeptical. But now they were willing to get arrested on the students’ behalf. Part of Felipe yearned to throw himself in with the allies and get arrested as well. It would be the most fitting end to the walk, he thought, the final act of commitment. Yet the bigger act of commitment was to his friends, who had all agreed to stick together. In April 2010, it was not yet commonplace to see young immigrant activists voluntarily get arrested. In fact, it was unheard of. The advocates would be detained and bailed out. Their lawyers would likely get any charges reduced or thrown out. But Felipe, Gaby, and Carlos could face deportation. And even if they didn’t get kicked out of the country this time, if they ever did have the opportunity to apply for permanent residency, an arrest and conviction could torpedo their application. It would make them more vulnerable. They would have to be even more careful in everything they said and did. They had worked so hard to create a voice for themselves and their friends. They didn’t want to lose it now.
Felipe grinned. They had completed what they’d set out to do. More than that, they now had a bigger, stronger network that would carry their dream forward. He was tired. And he was glad to hand over the baton. It was time for the next team to step up.
Reporters and videographers crowded around the advocates and Congressman Gutiérrez, who sported a T-shirt with the words “Arrest me not my friends,” as he was taken in a van to be fingerprinted.8 The bus with the detainees pulled away, and after dozens more interviews, the show was over. The four finally drifted back into the crowd.
Gaby took a cab to meet friends, declaring to her friends’ laughter, “I don’t want to walk anywhere anymore!”
Felipe and Juan headed to Dupont Circle with Felipe’s sister, Carolina, and his niece and nephew. They sat on the grass, blowing dandelions. Nobody recognized them. He would need time to sort through everything they had seen and heard along the Trail. He would need space to decide what he wanted to do next. But for now, he was content to lie down next to his sisters’ children and watch the bike messengers gather at the edge of the marble fountain. No more spotlight. I get to be a normal person again, he thought.
After 1,500 miles, it was as perfect an ending as he would get.
EXCEPT IT WASN’T AN ENDING. One of the groups organizing actions against the Arizona law asked the four young activists to lead a May 29 march in Phoenix. After that, there were calls for them to speak in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Roughly a month after they arrived in Washington, the four were back on the trail, this time in a plane, headed to Arizona to meet with Sheriff Joe Arpaio. They needed a break, but they couldn’t say no, especially not to a face-to-face with Arpaio, whom they’d heard so much about.
As they sat in the plane, looking down over the Gulf of Mexico, Juan leaned over to Felipe. “Will you protect me?” he asked, only half joking about the next leg of their trip.
“Yes!” replied Felipe. “But how?”
“Love me forever!” Juan declared.
Felipe could do that. He could definitely do that.
The plan was to hug Arpaio, a tactic of kindness they’d used on opposition throughout the walk. And they did. Some critics wondered how they could extend their arms to a man who seemed to actually enjoy raiding homes and rounding up immigrants.
For the group, it wasn’t just about turning the other cheek. They wanted to show they were unafraid of him. They also wanted to transmit in some basic way the pain they had absorbed along their trail from the stories of people like Oscar and Leslie.
And they called his bluff. A sheriff who derided the notion of prioritizing certain undocumented immigrants had invited them into his office, then declined to arrest them. The toughest sheriff in the country had just demonstrated his support for exercising prosecutorial discretion.
It was clear the walk to Washington had left an indelible imprint on the political landscape. United We Dream leaders now pointed to the Trail as an inspiration. Even people such as United We Dream leader Mohammad Abdollahi, who would soon split off to form a more radical immigrant activist group, acknowledged years later, “A lot of people say the first notion they have of undocumented folks is the kids walking from Florida.”
In Chicago, young undocumented activist leaders were beginning to seriously consider civil disobedience of their own. They now knew how to mobilize a network of friends and family, how to reach out to the media, how to flood immigration officials’ telephone lines and email accounts with petitions to defer a deportation. If they were detained, they believed, they could organize a similar campaign on their own behalf. Felipe and the other students on the Trail hadn’t been ready to get arrested. But they had opened door for others who were.
Taking a cue in part from the Trail of Dreams, Tania Unzueta joined Mohammad Abdollahi, whose family had fled Iran more than a decade before and had settled in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and together they set their sights on a nonviolent action in Arizona, at the offices of Republican senator John McCain. They made no effort to hide their plans. Tania and her group planned a sit-in at his Tucson office, knowing even a peaceful one could lead to their arrest and deportation. They worked with local activists and publicly counted down until the action. Tania called Dick Durbin’s office and talked with his staff, and she ke
pt the Washington contingent of United We Dream up to date as well.
Arizona was symbolic. Since it had passed the new immigration laws, similar measures had sprouted up in states across the country, many of them drafted in a coordinated manner through the national American Legislative Exchange Council, a business-backed group supported by the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch.
Meanwhile, McCain, who had led the immigration reform effort with Kennedy in the mid-2000s, had backed away from both a comprehensive bill and the DREAM Act ahead of his run for the GOP nomination in 2008, echoing the more conservative cry “Secure the borders before reform.”9 Yet he was still among the adversaries they thought they could most likely sway. After all, he’d cosponsored immigrant-friendly bills in 2003 and 2005. In his heart, they believed, he was still supportive of their cause.
On Monday, May 17, 2010, five young activists walked into McCain’s office. Along with twenty-six-year-old Tania and twenty-four-year-old Mohammad, the group included Lizbeth Mateo, twenty-five, a recent graduate of California State University, Northridge, and Yahaira Carrillo, twenty-five, of Kansas City, Missouri, both undocumented. Tucson high school counselor Raúl Alcaraz, twenty-seven, a legal US resident, rounded out the group.10
McCain was facing one of his toughest primaries in years against a conservative Republican candidate who backed Arpaio’s tough position on immigration, and he was still wounded by the attacks on his stance on immigration during the presidential campaign. It also seemed ridiculous to risk his campaign on a bill that was likely to fail. His staff welcomed the activists into the cramped office politely, and the senator even agreed to meet with them. But he wasn’t going to budge.
Nor were the activists. They sat against the wall, all five dressed in caps and gowns, jeans and sneakers emerging from beneath. Tania’s curly black hair spilled out from under her cap. On each of their gowns was pinned a button with a photo of two smiling young women.
The Making of a Dream Page 14
