The Making of a Dream

by Laura Wides-Muñoz

  That time no one laughed.

  “That just killed me,” he said quietly. Dario began to ramble about not wanting to ask his parents for more money, about looking for a gig as a sperm donor.

  “He did not say that!” a friend yelled out, laughing at Dario’s admission.

  “The downside is, I’m close to failing all my classes,” Dario continued, as if telling the punch line. The group was silent.

  “But I have to give a fuck,” Dario quickly added. The organizers exchanged more looks, wondering if they’d made a mistake letting him speak.

  Then he stopped. He looked out at the students, at the handful of professors and other friends, as if seeing them for the first time.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I just feel happy that you guys are here. A lot of you don’t have to care. Or you could be on the other side of the debate. And things being the way they are, the other students and myself who are up here really don’t have much we can do to change it—but thanks anyways,” he finished, and stepped off the stage.

  That summer, Dario returned home, and at the start of his junior year he moved off campus to avoid some of the distractions that had hurt his studies the previous semesters and to take advantage of the cheaper rent. Over his father’s objections, he officially declared visual arts as his major. He became a leader of the Latino Men’s Collective and the Boxing Club.

  In late fall, he received a call from his father. His mother was sick. It was likely cancer. He shouldn’t worry. They would beat it. But by January, doctors had confirmed the disease had established a stronghold in her kidneys. Dario took a leave of absence from Harvard and flew home.

  MARIE WAS SICK through most of her pregnancy. Finally, in March, she and Chapin decided she should quit her job and spend a few months with her mother in Costa Rica. If Marina wasn’t allowed to be there in Missouri when the baby came, at the very least she could pamper her daughter beforehand and allow Marie’s grandmother to do the same. It was the most time mother and daughter had spent together in seven years. Marina became acquainted with the adult version of the nineteen-year-old she had left behind, and for the first time, Marie began to see her mom as a woman in her own right. “That’s how I made peace with the fact she wasn’t going to be there at the birth,” she said. She ate fresh fruit every day, and for the first time in years, she let others take care of her.

  Araceli was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in July 2014. Secretly, Marie had wished for a blond Missouri-looking baby, hoping her daughter’s citizenship would never be questioned. But she fell in love the moment she saw the dark curls on the baby’s head. Celi, as they would call her, came out with a feisty cry, full of fight, “just like her mom,” Marie joked.

  As she held her daughter, Marie ached to have her own mother with her, to share her pride in the life she had just created. The nurse took the baby over to Chapin, and Marie watched him, the person whom she had leaned on, her cheerleader and partner through so many ups and downs, as he cradled the baby in his arms, his eyes wide, taking in every part of the tiny new creature. Marie leaned back against her hospital bed pillows and rested.

  11

  THE NEXT BATTLE

  Isabel and Felipe Sousa-Rodriguez take a day off at the Magic Kingdom Theme Park in Orlando, Florida, April 2017. (COURTESY OF ISABEL SOUSA-RODRIGUEZ)

  In early June 2013, Juan Rodriguez turned in his application for US citizenship. He also requested a name change.

  Ever since he was a kid, Juan had wanted a different name, something more sophisticated, a pseudonym like that of the great authors. It wasn’t just the fact that his name was so common, though; Juan, like its English version, John, symbolized to him the most classic of male names, the most classic male identity.

  He’d grown up with a male role model, his father, who had almost never expressed weakness, tenderness, or even sadness. If that was what it meant to be masculine, Juan wanted to run in the opposite direction.

  He wanted to challenge how men defined themselves, starting with their names. Increasingly, he wondered if he even met the definition of a man. What if inside were more a mix of the feminine and the masculine. And what if sometimes he felt much more feminine inside, what if sometimes he felt more like a woman? Juan, who questioned everything, began to talk more openly with Felipe, wondering why he had to choose this binary way of being. He wanted a name that reflected all this. He chose his mother’s name: Isabel.

  The year Juan officially became Isabel, Caitlyn Jenner had yet to come out, gendered bathrooms had yet to become a topic of controversy on the nightly news. Isabel downplayed the name change at first. It was too complicated to explain to anyone beyond the most inner circle. Isabel began to use the pronoun “they” to describe themselves, a recognition of both the feminine and masculine sides of their nature, a separate, nonbinary category. Many days, they still dressed more like a man. Friends were confused at first: “they,” meaning Isabel and Felipe or just Isabel? But slowly the new name and Isabel’s new identity began to sit more comfortably and the confusions diminished, were more easily laughed at. Coming out as a queer man had been easier for Isabel than for Felipe, and Isabel had been patient. Now Felipe could hardly begrudge his partner’s new journey.

  Miguel Flores, the immigration agent who sat across from Isabel and reviewed their application for citizenship, didn’t seem particularly fazed by the name change. In fact, he perked up to hear that Isabel had married a Brazilian. He, too, loved Brazilian culture. Apologetically, though, he told Isabel he would have to make a correction, changing Isabel’s marital status to single. Regardless of whether the state of Massachusetts recognized the wedding vows between two men, the federal government did not—meaning that Felipe would remain an “illegal alien.”

  Their timing was terrible. On June 26, 2013, just days after Isabel submitted their citizenship application, the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as an act between a man and a woman. The Court sidestepped the fundamental issue of whether same-sex marriage was protected by the US Constitution, but the 5–4 decision meant the Obama administration was free to recognize state-approved unions and to grant them the same federal rights and privileges given to men and women who wed.

  Had Isabel requested citizenship a month later, they would have automatically been able to petition for Felipe. Now Isabel and Felipe celebrated the bittersweet news at home. Isabel would finally be able to petition for Felipe’s citizenship but would have to file an entirely separate application for Felipe, a process that could take years longer.

  Felipe attended Isabel’s naturalization ceremony with mixed emotions. He was thrilled for Isabel to finally receive a full-bodied bear hug from the United States of America, and he was happy to see Isabel’s name change, knowing how much it meant to his spouse. Yet once again he was left on the sidelines.

  Felipe watched the group of forty immigrants, many Latinos, one woman in a hijab, a few from Canada, when they stood to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to Be an American,” blasted from the speakers as a video of America’s mountains, beaches, and heartlands filled the room with inescapable Olympic-style patriotism.

  The judge who administered the citizenship oath surprised Felipe, speaking at length of his pride in being the grandson of Italian immigrants and cautioning them not to lose their history and languages. The judge lamented that his own grandfather had spoken only English to his children, ensuring they would be monolingual. Speak your native language, he urged. What makes this country special is what we bring to it.

  After the music and the speeches ended, Isabel ran over to Felipe and embraced him. Together they pulled out the new citizenship certificate. “Look! Look!” Isabel pointed to the paper. Printed across the left-hand side, in elegant script, was the word “Married.”

  Isabel and Felipe would never know for sure, but they wanted to believe that it had been the sympathetic agent, Flores, who had gone back and amended the applicati
on and, in one fell swoop, recognized Felipe’s right to marry the person he loved and put him on the path to becoming a US citizen. Felipe and Isabel immediately set about filing for Felipe’s residency.

  ELSEWHERE AMONG the immigrant activists, joy over the DACA victory was fading. The Gang of Eight’s comprehensive reform bill passed the Senate in June.1 Among its requirements: a more than decade-long path to citizenship for millions of immigrants; mandatory workplace checks of employment eligibility; increased border security; and more visas for temporary workers. It also shifted the immigration priorities away from the family-based focus established in 1965 to the prioritization of certain skills.

  Still, Tea Party Republicans saw no benefit to supporting a bill their constituencies wouldn’t embrace. They questioned the message amnesty would send to those still considering whether to cross illegally or to come and overstay a visa. Speaker of the House John Boehner refused to bring the vote to the floor. Marco Rubio backed off from his own proposal. The Democrats didn’t seem to be in a tremendous hurry, either. Anger over Republican stalling on immigration might not hurt them in the midterm elections with most voters, while a vote in favor of comprehensive reform could put them at risk with others.

  Felipe and Isabel moved to Central Florida, where Isabel helped to expand the Florida Immigrant Coalition’s work with young students and other activists in and around Tampa. Once more they began lobbying for the in-state tuition bill, first floated in Tallahassee a decade before. Felipe took a job with GetEQUAL, the group behind the military veterans who had chained themselves to the White House fence. It seemed like the perfect fit, an LGBTQ organization looking for alliances with other grassroots groups.

  One fall afternoon, the organization sent him to the house of two burgeoning activists named Kimmy and Barb to provide them training. Inspired by the immigrant movement, the couple had recently gotten themselves arrested outside Senator Rubio’s Central Florida office to demand that he support a bill banning workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. But they hadn’t known what to do after that.

  Felipe unpacked his poster pad and Magic Markers. With his preppy orange polo shirt, khaki pants, sandals, and black-framed glasses, Felipe gave off more the impression of an intellectual Abercrombie & Fitch model than a radical agent of change.

  “Your goal cannot be to change the infrastructure of the country,” he said as the women sipped beers and shared their couches with their small barkless Basenji dogs. “It has to be concrete.”

  He wrote “Theory of change” in big letters on his pad. “It’s really important to figure out who has the power to give you what you want,” he said. “What do I have that, if I take it away, they [will] do what I want?” he added. “How many days left in Congress?” The women didn’t know.

  “There are fifty days. So, if your campaign lasts sixty days?” Felipe paused, all sweetness and light. The woman looked at him, unsure.

  “We lose,” he said. “That’s why you need a plan.”

  For more than an hour, Felipe gave the women the tough lessons he’d distilled from his more than six years in the trenches. He worked them on the difference between strategy and tactics. Tactics alone—a sit-in, a letter-writing campaign—didn’t generally achieve much, he explained. To make change, they would need a broader strategy.

  They discussed putting the pressure back on Florida Democratic senator Bill Nelson, who had recently announced his support for same-sex marriage but still wouldn’t back the antidiscrimination bill.

  What resources could they take away? How much money was Nelson getting from LGBTQ donors? The activists worried not enough people would follow through. After a march to which 250 people showed up, only 10 had come to a follow-up meeting. Each action has to bring in more people, Felipe told them, creating a “snowball effect.” But even for economically comfortable US citizens, it was tough to tell people to take off a day of work.

  Kimmy jumped to her feet as the session ended. “I feel so motivated now,” she said. “We had just stopped after our first effort.”

  Felipe grinned.

  Like many Americans, Barb and Kimmy had never really known someone living in the country illegally. They’d hired undocumented workers for jobs, maybe, passed them in the street, but they’d never broken bread or shared a beer with one and certainly never taken a crash course on social change theory from one.

  But if immigrants were to have any hope of succeeding, these were allies Felipe was convinced they needed.

  ANOTHER BIG FIGHT was brewing in Washington. Activists were asking the president to expand DACA to include young immigrants such as Alex who hadn’t made the original cut and even the parents of US citizens and those with DACA, such as Dario Guerrero Sr. and Hareth’s mother, Betty Ayala. It was a bold request, they knew. Yet if the House refused to take up the Senate bill, they saw few other options. Once again the president insisted he had no authority to take action without Congress.

  Outside Washington, other activists were increasingly convinced that the sit-ins, and now even the more brazen Washington protests, were becoming passé. With each new action the ante was upped, until that new action became the norm, and the media and the public became inured to its impact.

  They needed to raise the stakes once more. In July 2013, three young immigrant activists, including Lizbeth Mateo of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, who’d protested in John McCain’s office with Tania Unzueta back in 2010, flew to Mexico to reunite with family members they hadn’t seen in decades. There they began to stage one of the most audacious immigrant actions they had ever carried out.

  The small group joined half a dozen DREAMers who had weighed their prospects in the United States and mostly self-deported after high school, in one case only days before DACA was announced. Such cases weren’t common but weren’t unheard of, either. Some had been unable to find jobs or go on to college in the United States. Others had already lost family to deportation and opted to rejoin them, or were simply tired and fearful of the constant uncertainty. So they had left. Now, though, they wanted to be considered for DACA retroactively.

  Together the group dressed in the seemingly requisite caps and gowns, locked arms and turned themselves in at the Nogales, Arizona, port of entry, seeking asylum in the United States. For so long, immigrant activists had focused on keeping people from being deported. Now they were shifting the lens to the forgotten families that had already been split up. And they were testing the government’s willingness to recognize a broader category of so-called DREAMers, young immigrants who’d come of age in the United States, regardless of whether they were officially eligible for the DREAM Act or even DACA. The media dubbed the group DREAM 9. The activists called their action the “Bring Them Home” campaign. The US government refused the precedent-setting request for humanitarian parole and placed the border crossers in detention, where most spent more than two weeks as they applied for asylum.

  Just as she had done for her mother, Arizona activist Erika Andiola joined other activists across the country creating petitions for each border crosser, encouraging her networks to flood Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local lawmakers with calls and emails, lining up attorneys, and working contacts in Washington. At the AFL-CIO, Hareth advocated for support of the DREAM 9. She and another intern monitored the situation each day. Some at the AFL-CIO questioned whether the DREAM 9 had gone too far. During one discussion, veteran labor leaders worried their action was too radical. The group at the border was trying to challenge the very idea of borders. Hareth and her fellow intern looked at each other.

  “No, this isn’t radical. This is cool!” they responded.

  Those who had crossed into Mexico for the action and then tried to return to the United States, such as Lizbeth Mateo, put their DACA applications in jeopardy. Yet all nine were eventually allowed back in, at least temporarily, until their cases were settled. Capitalizing on what they viewed as a success, in September the National Immigrant Youth Alliance org
anized a larger group dubbed DREAM 30. This time, though, only those who’d been deported or self-deported—those who had little to lose—participated.

  The next wave of crossing garnered more attention and controversy. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) called the actions immigration fraud and highlighted the “stunts” as another reason to clamp down on border security. Besides, he argued, wasn’t self-deportation the whole point? Talented youths who couldn’t find jobs should return and contribute to their home countries, regardless of whether they spoke the language or ever remembered living there.

  But it wasn’t just those opposed to comprehensive immigration reform who took issue with the actions. The campaign once more brought to the surface long-simmering tensions over strategy within the movement. Respected immigration advocates, such as David Leopold, the former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, denounced the protests as irresponsible publicity stunts that distracted from the effort to achieve lasting immigration reform. Some lawyers worried those who had crossed into Mexico only to come back hadn’t been adequately advised about the legal risks they faced, and they feared the border actions would make the movement look too extreme, scaring off potential allies. Others worried that the mass requests for asylum would hurt the chances of those for whom winning asylum was literally a question of life or death.

  The Alliance’s Mohammad Abdollahi responded that no one should speak for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants but the immigrants themselves. Waiting on allies and trying not to scare them off hadn’t gotten them very far, he insisted. The exchanges quickly got ugly and personal, and they were available for all to see across the internet.

  Shortly after Representative Luis Gutiérrez helped release one of the DREAM 30 from detention, activists held a sit-in at his office, refusing to leave until the congressman talked to the president about freeing more of the detainees. As they had during the 2010 battle, they surreptitiously taped and aired conversations with the congressman. Gutiérrez announced that he was done dealing with the National Immigrant Youth Alliance and urged families not to participate in the border crossings. The group would soon find itself sidelined.