The Making of a Dream

by Laura Wides-Muñoz

  Buying a car from a dealership, with all its requirements for insurance, not to mention getting a loan, was tough without legal status. One day he’d passed the Mustang with a FOR SALE sign on it. He’d had to get it. They could get basic insurance from Adriana’s Insurance Services, whose TV ads assured potential customers coverage con o sin licencia (with or without a license).

  Dario Sr. smiled to himself. Who would ever imagine that a kid driving a red Mustang was without papers, without a license?

  In September 2011, Dario drove with his parents across the country to Boston, in the minivan, not the Mustang. Even before they’d found his dorm on Harvard Yard, part of him yearned for them to leave. He was finally starting life, freed from family but also from that box “illegal immigrant.” From here on his identity would be Harvard student. His mother wanted to stay and help him unpack. No, no, he protested, shooing them out, just as students across the freshman quadrangle were doing. He was fine. There was a welcome party to go to, new kids to meet.

  As they pulled away, Dario’s father noted to Rocio how few Mexican families they’d seen. Maybe there were some güeros, wealthy Mexican students, but he wondered if there were any other working-class students, immigrant or not, like his son. And yet this was everything he’d wanted for his eldest child, he reminded himself. He brushed away tears and pulled onto Interstate 95.

  IN EARLY 2011, a group of United We Dream leaders met in Arizona with Michele Rudy, a mentor and an organizer with the Center for Community Change. If they couldn’t pass the DREAM Act, they would focus on the executive branch, as the Trail of Dreams group had sought. A smaller, more informal group met again in Miami for a more therapeutic retreat.

  “I wish someone had sat down with us and said, ‘Hey, you’re going to be exhausted, you have to find some balance.’ I didn’t even know what burnout was,” Boston activist Renata Teodoro said of those first months following the 2010 vote.

  The Miami meeting was in part an attempt to find the balance. So many of the nascent movement’s leaders had come into activism through personal desperation. Now they began to ask themselves if this would be their life’s work and if they were willing to stick with it over the long haul.

  Juan Rodriguez saw Renata at the Miami retreat and approached her. “Your interview after the Senate vote allowed me to shed tears and keep on going,” he confessed shyly. “You were the reason I could get through.”

  The retreat was a safe place, away from the media and the politicians, in which to shed tears and take stock. The weekend renewed activists’ convictions, but it couldn’t erase their exhaustion and heartbreak. Many activists, including Felipe, went home to rethink their role in the movement. Some of the activists officially announced their split from United We Dream, establishing the more publicly aggressive National Immigrant Youth Alliance.

  For Hareth, the 2010 Senate vote had been something of a tease. Unlike the leaders who had been involved for much of the previous decade, she had just gotten her feet wet. Now what? She was graduating, and, unlike Dario, there was no call from Harvard. Her dream school, the University of Virginia, was out of the question. She wasn’t eligible for in-state residence tuition, and she didn’t have an international student visa. Tuition and books alone would cost around $45,000 annually. The number might as well have been $5 million. As she tried to figure out her next step, Hareth reached out to her mentor, Emma Violand-Sánchez, then a school board member and longtime supervisor of the Arlington Public Schools’ English Language Learners program, whom Hareth had campaigned for after the 2006 marches. Like so many K–12 educators before her, Dr. Emma was frustrated by the idea that the country would invest in more than a decade of education for immigrant kids, then leave them hanging when it came to the final years necessary to earn more than a minimum wage.1

  Dr. Emma invited Hareth, her parents, and several other families to help start a nonprofit that would seek private scholarships for undocumented students. She connected the students with local mentors, teachers, and lawyers she knew, many of them Bolivian, to get teens like Hareth into and through college.

  The parents began meeting, too, sometimes in homes or in community spaces. Soon, the Virginia-based Dream Project became a support network not only for students like Hareth but for their parents as well. Unlike their daughter, Mario and Betty were too terrified to “come out” at work or in public. In these spaces, though, they began to open up and share their stories, just as their children had. Betty and the other mothers organized fund-raisers, bake sales, gala dinners. They didn’t raise a lot of money, but it made Betty feel she was doing something.

  Still Hareth wanted to do more. She waited for signals from the national leaders. Would an email pop up in her in-box telling her where to go? Eventually a friend and local organizer in Maryland, who was working to get in-state tuition for undocumented students there, told her to stop waiting for guidance. This was DIY activism. She didn’t need money or a budget. She and her friends needed to keep making their voices heard any way they could, even if on a small and local basis. So they did.

  They took photos of themselves carrying a cardboard sign that read “I am a DREAMer,” and posted them on Facebook, asking friends to share. On weekends, they stood at a busy Arlington intersection near Hareth’s apartment with signs, waving them at drivers waiting for the light.

  “What is a DREAMer?” some drivers asked.

  “It’s me,” Hareth replied, answering their questions about what it meant to live without immigration papers until the light turned green.

  In the spring of 2011, Hareth was among the Dream Project’s first scholarship recipients, receiving $2,000 toward college. She had settled on Northern Virginia Community College. It was near, it was affordable—albeit just barely—and Hareth was cautiously excited. Still, she would need more money to make it through the first year. She thought about taking a job under the table like her parents.

  Then she got an invitation that would change her life. Following the Senate DREAM Act vote, the University of California, Los Angeles’ Center for Labor Research and Education had been looking for ways to reenergize discouraged undocumented activists and keep them politically engaged. It wanted to keep pressing for the DREAM Act, but it needed a new direction. After talking with students, the center’s director, Kent Wong, settled on the idea of a scholarship and fellowship program. The students would receive money to attend the college of their choice and a desperately needed vote of confidence in their future. The Center would offer them a weekend of organizing training, followed by a fellowship at a community or labor group. It seemed like a win-win both for the students and for the labor movement, which would build a new generation of sympathetic young activists. The result: Dream Summer, the first nationwide scholarship program for undocumented youths.

  Wong reached out to United We Dream and its affiliates to find candidates. Hareth’s name was added to the list. But she was still seventeen, the youngest candidate, and Wong wavered about including her. “Can we take the risk? She could be deported on her flight out here. She’s a minor,” he worried.

  The other young activists laughed. We could all be deported. Hareth was old enough. She knew the risks.

  While her friends went off to beach week during the days before graduation, Hareth headed for Los Angeles. The June training was her first trip on an airplane since she’d arrived in the United States more than a decade before. She was excited but nervous. The labor Center asked immigration lawyers to remain on standby in the event any of their students were stopped by immigration authorities midtrip. The Center set up a hotline to field questions in case of emergencies. Betty called the emergency number nearly every hour until she received confirmation her daughter had arrived.

  Hareth spent only the weekend in Los Angeles, but the brief training left its mark. There she met Marco Quiroga, who had immigrated from Peru as a toddler and who shared with Hareth and the others his fears about coming out to his family as gay. It was his sexual
identity, he added, that made him so determined never to return to Peru, where police used water cannons to break up peaceful LGBTQ demonstrations,2 and where gay men regularly faced hate crimes that went unpunished.3

  Hareth returned to Arlington and split her fellowship between the Virginia Dream Project and the small nonprofit, Edu-Futuro (Education for the Future), which had sponsored her. Many of the other Dream Summer participants took their newfound organizing skills to lobby state lawmakers in Sacramento in favor of two California bills that could help undocumented students. One would make them eligible for private scholarships at state colleges and universities. The other would open state-financed scholarships to them. They argued for both, but with no taxpayer dollars required, the private scholarship bill was the easier sell. In July, the legislature passed that measure, thanks in part to the students’ strong presence; they had repeated many of the tactics that had been used in Washington for the DREAM Act but this time with more success. It was a small victory, more a symbolic one, but one that began to blow wind back into the students’ sails. By October, the governor had signed the second bill into law, too.

  FELIPE SPENT MUCH OF 2011 working with Presente.org, the group that had publicized the Trail of Dreams. But after more than a year of absorbing the stories of children who had lost parents or were terrified of losing them, he struggled to keep going. Some nights, he found himself just sitting in his car crying as he listened to bad pop songs on the radio.

  Yet he knew what they had done mattered. He continued to see the Trail’s influence spread. In June 2011, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and former Washington Post staffer Jose Antonio Vargas came out about his undocumented status in a piece for the New York Times Magazine, detailing the years he’d spent hiding his identity from friends, bosses, and sources.

  “On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream. But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am,” he wrote.

  The Trail of Dreams had helped change that.

  “Last year I read about four students who walked from Miami to Washington to lobby for the Dream Act, a nearly decade-old immigration bill that would provide a path to legal permanent residency for young people who have been educated in this country,” wrote Vargas, who was born in the Philippines. “At the risk of deportation—the Obama administration has deported almost 800,000 people in the last two years—they are speaking out. Their courage has inspired me.”

  Like Felipe, he was no longer willing to live a lie. “I’m done running. I’m exhausted. . . . So I’ve decided to come forward, own up to what I’ve done, and tell my story to the best of my recollection.”4

  Moments like that kept Felipe going as he began to chart his next steps. Yet at home he was increasingly restless. Despite their having lived together for more than two years, Juan refused to talk about their future. Felipe couldn’t control politics, but his personal life was different. He wanted reassurance that his partner would be there at least tomorrow and preferably many days after that. He hinted at marriage, but Juan shut him down.

  “So where is this going to go?” Felipe asked.

  “I don’t know. Tomorrow I might not even be here,” Juan answered. He had to be honest. He wouldn’t promise Felipe he’d always be his partner.

  Juan’s father had been married four times. He’d had kids each time, and each time he’d left them. Yes, Juan was crazy about Felipe, but to promise forever? He didn’t believe it was possible.

  Felipe tried to make do with the present. He wasn’t ready to leave, but he began to wonder what would happen if you had to love someone a little less every day—purely out of self-preservation.

  In the fall of 2011, Juan’s relatives on his father’s side gathered for Thanksgiving. Significant others were included, but not Felipe.

  To their surprise, Juan’s grandmother on his mother’s side invited Juan to visit her in Charleston, South Carolina, over the New Year and explicitly asked for Felipe to come. Juan’s mother had remained in Colombia, and he had been raised by his father. He wasn’t particularly close to his grandmother. But he and Felipe had never been to Charleston, and they needed the vacation. And, most of all, they were desperate to be in a place where they were both welcome.

  Felipe was so nervous, he wrote talking points to ensure he’d make good conversation with Juan’s abuela. As they approached the city after nine hours in the car, Felipe was exhausted and looking forward to collapsing. But Juan had other ideas. He suggested they get dinner and walk along the historic district’s Waterfront Park before heading to his grandmother’s home. The late-December night was near freezing. Once again, Felipe had forgotten to pack a winter coat. His stomach was growling. He had to pee.

  Why couldn’t they just go to the house already? he demanded.

  Trust me, Juan begged.

  So they sat by the harbor beneath the clear sky and crescent moon. Felipe looked out at the port, the lights of boats dotting the water. Ravenel Bridge glowed in the distance.

  “This is where most of the slaves came into this country,” Juan said, pointing to a shopping center. “This is where the ships unloaded the slaves . . . and this is where they were sold.” He pointed to the old slave mart, now a museum of African American handcrafts.

  Felipe shook his head. Anyone else would be admiring the stars, but no, Juan had to make a political statement. They held hands as they walked down the streets, and Juan continued his impromptu tour, stopping before the Daughters of the Confederacy and the other historic remnants of the antebellum South. Normally Juan’s seemingly endless passion for justice was a turn-on, but that night, as his teeth chattered, Felipe found his single-mindedness more irritating than inspiring. Maybe they could pop into a nearby restaurant and grab a bite or at least use the bathroom, he suggested. But Juan pressed on.

  As they walked, Felipe felt as if the streets cleared before them, families giving them wide berth. He wondered if it was in his mind or whether two young men holding hands on a winter night was really enough to frighten the locals.

  Finally, Juan led Felipe to the steps of the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection building, a massive neoclassical edifice that looked as if it belonged on Capitol Hill. It had been commissioned as a custom house before the Civil War as part of the union’s futile effort to stave off Southern secession. Felipe and Juan sat silently beneath the white, Corinthian columns.

  Juan looked over at Felipe and finally seemed to notice how cold he was. He began to talk, the words tripping over themselves. “I really wanted to bring you here,” he began, “because this is the hub of a place that wanted to destroy us before we were born: the racism, the homophobia.” He kneeled before Felipe on the cold steps of the Department of Homeland Security building. “You’ve made this universe more bearable. I wanted to reclaim this place for love.” He pulled out a small box, a wedding favor from the recent marriage of two friends that had held Moroccan chocolates. Now, nestled inside, were two silver rings.

  Felipe’s breath billowed out, a wisp in the cold air. He grinned and kissed Juan, holding him tightly, not caring who saw.

  Yes, I will marry you. Yes, I will protect you and stay with you.

  As they headed back, the night seemed to tiptoe around them. No more fear. At least not tonight. He wondered if it was possible to burst open with happiness. Later Juan confessed to Felipe that it was the approach of their fourth anniversary as a couple that had spurred him to action. It seemed as though all of his father’s relationships had fallen apart around the fourth year. Maybe it was a curse. He still wasn’t sure he believed in marriage, but he knew he didn’t want to lose Felipe. They celebrated the rest of the weekend. Felipe lost his conversation notes, and it didn’t matter.

  They returned home and began to make wedding plans. One afternoon,
Felipe sat down with his five-year-old nephew and showed him a book about two men getting married. His nephew dutifully listened to the story, then turned to his uncle. Okay, can we play soccer now?

  Sure, we can play soccer now.

  They couldn’t actually get married in Florida, where same-sex marriage was still illegal. Instead they threw a massive party in Miami and planned a quick courthouse wedding and honeymoon in Boston, where gay marriage was already legal.

  Activists from across the country and family from across the hemisphere came to the Miami celebration. Friends donated the cake. Felipe wore a gray suit; Juan dressed in white. They both sported lavender cummerbunds and bow ties and matching nail polish. They held an unofficial ceremony in a local park. Felipe’s sister walked him down the pavement toward the white canopy. His mother did not attend.

  That evening they danced and ate until Felipe thought he would collapse.

  In mid-May, Felipe graduated from St. Thomas University, the first in his immediate family to earn a university degree. His husband cheered from the crowd.

  With things more stable at home, Felipe began to look for change on the professional front. His immigration status remained the same, but he felt more grounded now, had more energy to focus outward. It seemed as though no matter what they did, the immigrant advocates would never have enough sway, not alone anyway. They needed a broader base. Felipe turned to his friends in the LGBTQ community. Maybe now it was time to learn from the inside how the nation’s other powerful—and far better heeled—civil rights movement worked. Soon he was back on the ground, helping to teach LGBTQ activists, often wealthy and white, about the basic principles of organizing and about the struggles of undocumented immigrants like him.