To make matters worse, Marie’s father had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. Two surgeries later, he was undergoing chemotherapy. She ached to be by his side. The days ticked down. The September trip to Washington, some two months before the wedding, was a welcome distraction, although the bus ride took more than twenty-four hours. Once again Marie went to lobby lawmakers for the DREAM Act. This time, it seemed, maybe they had a chance.
There has been so much hard work. I have to be there for my own sake, and for those who can’t be, she thought.
Before going, she took stock of the Missouri delegation. Democratic senator Claire McCaskill had opposed the DREAM Act in the past but now seemed open to at least considering it. Republican senator Kit Bond was firmly in the no camp. And Representative Roy Blunt, a fellow Republican running to succeed Bond, faced attacks from Democrats over whether he and his former wife had years before hired an undocumented immigrant to do housekeeping and tried to expedite her asylum case. Any hope that Blunt might be willing to consider a more moderate stance on Marie’s case or any other withered.
In the end, Marie spent most of her time lobbying lawmakers outside her state. After months of working at the insurance company, it was exciting to once again be part of something bigger, something that could affect the lives of so many. Despite all the heartache, she still loved Washington, still wanted someday to work there.
She was a bit envious of the younger activists. Like many other DREAM elders, she’d pitched herself to the nation as the perfect immigrant, the immigrant whose story everyone could stand behind. After all, hadn’t the slogan and the T-shirts for her case read “We Are Marie”? And especially in the early years, in a conservative town where so few had gone public about their status, she had been terrified that one false move—even driving without a license—would not only get her deported but also erase that “We” for her and for thousands of other young immigrants whom she represented.
The teens roaming the halls of Congress these days seemed so much freer. Just by showing up, they were taking risks she hadn’t. Marie had been forced out. She had already been in deportation proceedings when she spoke on Capitol Hill back in 2004, with little left to lose. But these youths were putting themselves at greater risk by voluntarily revealing their status. And there were so many of them.
By 2010, Marie had been telling her story for more than half a decade. She’d become more jaded after the failure to pass immigration legislation in 2007. Each trip had become harder. Every time she recounted the moment DHS took her parents to be questioned, she revisited the terror of suddenly realizing the government viewed her and her family as criminals. Every time she recalled the day her parents had to leave Missouri, her chest constricted with the utter panic of saying good-bye.
Now she was so close to having the chance to move on and become a citizen. There were so many she was leaving behind, not just those staking their lives on the DREAM Act but also those who wouldn’t be eligible. She felt guilty simply for enjoying the thought of the relief she would soon have.
In October, she wrote a blog post, a plea of sorts to her friends and fellow advocates. Ostensibly, it was about her departure from Washington, but it also spoke to the much greater departure she would soon make: “I know that many of you wish that I could just wait a bit longer and see what happens, but I can no longer wait. My life has long been in limbo, and with my father’s illness I will not sit from afar and watch.”2
In late October, Marie received word that her file had been sent to the wrong processing center and now no one could find the application. As the holidays approached, Marie and Chapin were forced to push back their flight until Thanksgiving Day to squeeze out extra time to sort out the visa delays. The wedding was set for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Marie had called the DHS inquiry line telephone number so many times that she knew it by heart. Advocates and pro bono lawyers once again intervened on her behalf. Finally she received notice that her casework had been found. Her interview would be scheduled in Kansas City for Tuesday, November 16, when Marie and Chapin would answer a battery of questions to prove that theirs was not a sham marriage. Sometimes Marie felt like her entire life consisted of proving to the world that she was not a fraud.
Three days after the interview, on Friday, November 19, Marie headed back to Kansas City for the FBI fingerprinting to ensure that she had no criminal background and to keep her identity on file for the future. Her lawyers assured her the prints would be screened by early the following week.3 On November 23, forty-eight hours before their Thanksgiving Day flight, Marie and Chapin chugged down their coffee. More bad news: the fingerprints had yet to come back. No one knew why. Their wedding was scheduled for Saturday, and still Marie did not have permission to leave the country. They drove back to the Kansas City DHS office again. The security officers at the front desk recognized her. Still no luck? they texted, as surprised as she was.
Determined to make the plane, Marie and Chapin decided to wait at DHS for news. Although the agency would be open the day before Thanksgiving, immigration officials had told Marie they would be processing only deportations. Marie began emailing all of her old immigration contacts, including Josh Bernstein.
When the clock ticked 5:30 p.m. and they had to leave, the guards at the front entrance tried to console Marie as she sobbed.
She called her father in Costa Rica. Friends and family had already begun arriving. She was going to get on the plane, she told him. She was done. She didn’t care if she couldn’t come back.
No, m’hija, he told her. Don’t be rash. They could always reschedule the party. But for Marie to lose her US home now, after everything they’d been through? That was crazy talk.
On their drive home, Chapin, usually so calm and collected, pulled over to the side of the road, got out, and banged his broad fists against the car, his tears streaming into the wind.
That night, there seemed only one thing left to do. They met up at a bar with the only close friends who were still in town, friends of Chapin’s who hadn’t been able to afford the flight to Costa Rica. They downed tequila shots as it slowly sank in that they were going to miss their own wedding and stumbled to bed past midnight.
The phone rang at 7:30 the next morning, jolting Marie wide awake. Her head throbbed as she answered, still half asleep. It was Marie’s lawyer. Someone had found her fingerprints. Marie was scheduled for an appointment in two hours back at the Kansas City DHS office. Get to DHS! the lawyer roared.
Marie and Chapin grabbed their keys and jumped into the car. Marie was still in sweatpants, evidence of the previous night’s makeup and the salty remains of her tears still on her cheeks. When they arrived, the guards at security high-fived her. Don’t ask questions, they said.
A few hours later, it was done. Finally they were free. The next day, as they sat on the plane, Marie considered the miracle that had occurred. They had come so close to missing it all. And if there hadn’t been “We Are Marie,” if she had been just one of a million other Maries, she probably would have missed it.
Marie barely recognized her father at the airport. It had been five years. She had seen pictures, but looking at him in person was different. The chemo had robbed him of his thick black hair and mustache. He was thin and slightly stooped. Still, he grabbed Marie in a bear hug. Finally.
Some forty people were already at her parents’ home in Puntarenas when they arrived, the home she had helped her parents build by sending part of her salary to them each month. A local photographer was there, snapping pictures. A Costa Rican radio reporter wanted an interview, too. Marie desperately wanted to be left alone with her parents, to curl up in her mother’s arms, but she reminded herself that this was bigger than her story. And she was here in part thanks to the media. Patiently she answered question after question.
Finally they began to focus on the day at hand. Marie’s mother had already baked the prewedding Thanksgiving turkey at Marie’s grandparents’ house. Mother and daughter drove to r
etrieve it. Marie salivated as she carried the crisp heavy bird to the car. They returned some fifteen minutes later. Everyone was outside. Marina told some of Marie’s American friends to help her bring the turkey and mashed potatoes inside. No one moved. Come inside, Chapin said.
Marie’s dad had collapsed. Marvin was lying in the small living room. Someone had already called an ambulance.
Mi amor, I don’t feel well, he said to his wife, clutching his chest. An American friend of Chapin’s who was a doctor kneeled by his side.
When the ambulance came, Marie jumped into the back, accompanying her father, making sure the EMTs knew he was allergic to aspirin. No, this is not happening, she told herself.
Medics whisked Marvin inside as soon as they arrived at the hospital. Someone guided Marie and her mother into another room. The doctor peppered them with questions. He barely looked up.
The questions went on and on. Finally Marie asked where her dad was.
The doctor pushed back his chair. First he gave them an extensive list of Marvin’s ailments. It had been the side effects of the chemo, not the cancer, that had triggered a heart attack. There was nothing more they could do, he said. Marvin was gone.
Marina collapsed. She demanded to be taken to him. It wasn’t until she was allowed to see his body, Marvin’s face looking for the first time in months as if he were truly in no more pain, that she was able to gather herself.
The wedding would go forward. Everyone was too overwhelmed to figure anything else out. Marie spent Thanksgiving night making both funeral and last-minute wedding arrangements. They picked out a casket at a neighbor’s home mortician business, driving to an ATM in the middle of the night because the neighbor wouldn’t accept a credit card. They paid someone else extra to build the traditional above-ground tomb overnight so the concrete would be dry by morning.
Marie had barely slept for two days, but her grandfather insisted they have coffee and snacks for the mourners who had begun to flock to the Gonzalez home as word spread of Marvin’s death. They buried him on Friday. On Saturday, she was back in the same chapel where her father’s casket had lain, making the final adjustments to the flower arrangements, and hanging white Chinese lanterns. Marie’s grandmother ironed her empire-waist white lace dress. And Marie walked to the aisle behind her six bridesmaids without her father, her black curls cascading down her shoulders. Her mother wore black.
Marie put a picture of her dad in a flowered shirt on her phone and placed it at the empty chair at the head of the table during the reception. Afterward, they took her thin bouquet of stargazers and white lilies and placed it on top of her father’s grave. Marie wondered that she had not run out of tears.
She had planned to return to Kansas City and maybe even make one more trip to Washington if the DREAM Act came to a vote. But she was still in Puntarenas helping her mother on December 8 when the House of Representatives passed a version of the DREAM Act, once again sponsored by Democratic representative Howard Berman of Los Angeles and Republican Lincoln Díaz-Balart of Miami. And she was still there six days later, when Reid finally announced that he would bring the DREAM Act to the floor of the Senate.
Throughout the late fall, long after Marie left, the young immigrants had been a relentless presence in Washington. Week after week they canvassed Capitol Hill, using the skills they had honed in the instate tuition and other local fights. It wasn’t just the sit-ins Hareth had participated in. They met with lawmakers to lobby them old-school style. They “bird-dogged” senators as they headed to the underground subway that ferried them from one side of Congress to the other. United We Dream organized daily “pray-ins” in congressional offices. The activists sat in the Senate cafeteria in their caps and gowns and held “study-ins.” They made up Christmas carols supporting immigration reform and gave impromptu concerts for lawmakers.4 They hadn’t felt so hopeful since Obama won the 2008 election.
The day before the vote, Carlos Saavedra, the Bostonian cofounder and leader of United We Dream, posted on Marie’s Facebook page, “Marie N. Deel, thank you for who you are, you were the key to building a strong immigrant student movement—you have inspired me to be a better person. You were one of the keys to bring us to this moment!”5
On December 18, 2010, Marie sat down at her mother’s kitchen table and turned on her computer. She stared at the screen, waiting for the Internet to kick in. She had spent the last three weeks almost in shock, operating on autopilot. The image of the Senate floor flickered to life. Senators began filing into the chamber. Marie kept one eye on the hearing and the other on her social media feed. She couldn’t think ahead. She couldn’t think back. She was exhausted. Yet part of her was still, to her own surprise, excited about the vote. No way would she miss the debate.
THAT SAME MORNING, Hareth packed into the gallery above the Senate floor along with hundreds of other millennials from around the country. One girl wore a cap and gown cut from a pattern of an American flag. Some held hands. Others prayed silently. Hareth scanned the wall behind her, taking in the white marble busts of vice presidents past ensconced in the nooks behind her. All around the balcony, a sea of young people sat stiffly in their skirts, suits, and ties, their mostly dark hair framing anxious mahogany eyes. Hareth had opted for a burgundy sweater, jeans, and a pink jacket: warmth, comfort, and respect, in that order.
Beneath the gallery, on the Senate floor, dozens of mostly pale men, many old enough to be her grandfather, chatted and joked with one another as they strode across the blue patterned carpet. Hareth willed herself to remember every face, every marble bust and ornate molding, every bang of the gavel. This was the moment when the US government could finally move her, and all those around her, from invisible to visible. She closed her eyes. Many in the gallery had crossed the Mexican-US border with their parents, often before they could remember, or at least remember much. Many had flown to the United States with their family on tourist visas and never returned. Some had come with only one parent. Others, like Hareth, had initially come with no parents at all.
The memory of her arrival still played at the edges of her consciousness, often when she was least prepared: her mother’s last glance as she said good-bye, the strangeness of the language, the aching feeling of loneliness in her gut, the rolling tug of uncertainty. She sensed that familiar roll now. She tried to convince herself it was the breakfast sandwich.
Only a few hours before, she had met other volunteers at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation a block away and scarfed down donated breakfasts. Some young activists had begun chanting, “We’re fired up!” in an echo of the 2008 Obama campaign chant.
“We’re fired up? Really, what does that even mean?” she’d muttered, watching them, almost embarrassed.
At seventeen, Hareth’s heart-shaped face, shaggy bangs, and shiny pin-straight black hair still gave her an air of soft innocence younger than her years. It was her eyes that caught people off guard: playful one minute, unyielding the next.
More chants had followed as they marched down East Capitol Street.
“Ain’t no power like the power of the people, because the power of the people don’t stop!” Antonella and another friend, Karen, had begun chanting along with the crowd.
Hareth had looked around at all the strangers moving together in the cold morning air. Their chants had echoed in her head, then bounced along her tongue.
“Ain’t no power . . .” she had mouthed, first in her head, next in a quiet whisper. Then she’d thrown her head back and opened her lungs wide. “AIN’T NO POWER!”
At the Capitol grounds, the chants caught in her throat. She’d been inside the Senate buildings already, but the Capitol, with its sloping lawn and wide steps, was a vastly more intimidating marble castle. All roads led here.
From her wooden seat in the gallery, Hareth looked down at the flag and the black marble desk in the center of the great hall. Above the vice president’s empty chair were carved the words “E Pluribus Unum.” Out of many, one.
Below, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid outlined the business of the special Saturday-morning session. They would start with a vote on House Bill 5281: the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2010. By taking up that version, they wouldn’t have to send the bill back to the House for another round of votes. They were not actually voting on the House bill but rather taking a cloture vote: deciding whether to end debate and hold an up-or-down vote on the proposal. For that, they needed sixty votes. If they couldn’t get cloture, the bill was essentially dead. If they did, the bill would likely pass.
If it passed, it would be the most significant immigration reform in more than two decades. Although far smaller in scale than the 1986 law, it would allow more than 1 million children and young adults with “good moral character” to step onto a path toward citizenship. Those who earned a high school diploma and completed at least two years of higher education or entered the military could eventually apply for US residency. In the meantime, they would be permitted to work, as well as study.
It was a long path, to be sure—nearly ten years if no delays were involved. But it was a path nonetheless, meaning that someday, even further down the road, they would be able to bring in their own parents, putting millions more unauthorized immigrants on the path to citizenship.
The vote was much more of a Hail Mary pass than Hareth knew. A month before, the Democrats had lost the House in the Tea Party’s sweep of Congress. Within weeks, a new set of more conservative lawmakers would convene, and the DREAM Act would have no chance. So there they were, nearly a hundred senators6 on a cold Saturday morning less than two weeks before Christmas, taking a vote that could reshape the nation.
The Making of a Dream Page 17
