But as Felipe watched his naturally introverted husband making an effort to be social that night, escaping only occasionally to refill the bowls of white beans and plates of ham, French macaroons and empanadas, he thought once more of his secret wish. What he wanted, maybe not for this birthday, but someday soon, was to become a father. Isabel was still unsure, wondering if they could swing it between their jobs and educational responsibilities. They needed to save more money, too. Unsaid were the other concerns: they likely couldn’t afford private adoption, and they wondered if they would be approved through the state-run process. Someday, thought Felipe.
Later in the evening, friends offered toasts. Isabel reached over to gently tug Felipe’s ear and thanked everyone for coming, for being part of their adopted family. Then they turned and wrapped their arms round Felipe. “Felipe is like the greatest thing that has ever happened to me, and I adore him and I worship him—” Isabel blushed happily.
Finally Felipe spoke. He’d written a poem for the occasion, imagining all he’d ever wanted to tell his mother and all he’d ever wanted to tell the world. It was, as always, a grand and dramatic flourish:
“Meu Filho [my son], the moon shined on you. That’s how my mother recounts the night I was born. . . . In a world where you are nothing but an illegal, in a world where you are reduced to just a faggot. In a world where you are mostly broke. I understood. I understood my canvas was rained with blood and strife. Ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty-eight days later I’m still here, for reasons still unknown to me. . . . I am the green grass outside the Miami airport. I reek of the open sewer in Duque de Caxias. I am the Cristo Redentor in Río. I am the best and worst, I’m still living a dream. But if you ask me really, I’m nothing but my mother’s son.”
ONE MONTH LATER, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Texas case. On April 17, the night before the justices would hear the case, a group from DREAMer Mothers in Action, middle-aged women wearing hot pink T-shirts, huddled under a makeshift tarp on the wide stairs of the Supreme Court building. So much had changed since their children had first come out publicly as undocumented immigrants. Now these women, inspired by their sons and daughters, regularly attended protests and kept up their own steady stream of social media. That night they kept vigil so the younger activists could get sleep for the morning. Nearby candles encircled a poster that demonstrators had left a few hours before with the photos of hundreds of people: mothers, fathers, and children—some who had already been deported, some whose fate could soon be decided by the Court.
Already a line of several dozen people snaked around the building as activists on both sides sought the few coveted spots available to hear the arguments. It was easy to tell who was there representing each side of the debate. Those who favored the president’s actions seemed cautiously optimistic and chatted freely.
Near the front of the line, roughly a dozen people sat comfortably in chairs, smartly dressed in warm parkas against the cold midnight winds. They didn’t seem to know much about the case but appeared to be hired to hold places for others, a common practice before big Supreme Court cases.
A few seats down from them, an older man in glasses and a New York Yankees cap piped up as one journalist began chatting with those at the front of the line. “You don’t have an opinion,” he spat out to the group of men and women serving as place holders, “at least not while I’m paying you.” The man declined to identify himself nor comment on which side he was representing, though it seemed clear he had not come with the immigrants.
Above, in the quiet of the night, American flags whipped in the breeze, clanking against the poles, as if to shout, “This is America! This is America!”
By the next morning, the Supreme Court steps were filled mostly with immigrants and their advocates. Senator Dick Durbin and Representatives Luis Gutiérrez and Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, mingled with activists before entering the court. Josh Bernstein had come as well. A smaller contingent supporting the states’ case also gathered, but their chants were generally drowned out by the larger pro-immigrant crowd.* The demonstrators held signs and chanted but were careful not to provoke the authorities. United We Dream and the veteran organizers wanted no arrests that day, nothing that could hurt their legal case. Most notable, though, was not so much who was standing outside the court, but who was allowed in. Gaby Pacheco, along with journalist turned advocate Jose Antonio Vargas, had been invited to attend the hearing. No longer were the DREAMers looking down from the marble gallery at those in power. No longer were they simply shouting from the outside. Now they were invited inside those marble halls to address the nation’s most powerful judicial body.
13
GRADUATION
Hareth Andrade-Ayala shows off her diploma at her home in Arlington, Virginia, May 2016.
Dario tossed sneakers, cologne, Clorox wipes, and books by C. S. Lewis and Junot Díaz into the boxes strewn around his bed. He stripped off his T-shirt and wiped sweat from his face. His cramped attic room in Harvard’s Leverett House was cozy in the winter, but with no air-conditioning, the early-May heat wave had turned the room into a dry sauna. Hard to believe that nearly two years before he’d been packing his clothes in another cramped room in Mexico. And now he was graduating. He looked out over the house master’s second-story balcony and the green quadrangle below, the site of spring lectures and tomorrow’s ceremony. Beyond, rowers cut through the surface of the Charles River in smooth, confident strokes.
He’d missed many house events, preoccupied with his mom, his classes, girls . . . too often girls. He shrugged. Too late to worry about that now.
Since returning to school in January 2015, he’d moved back on campus and tried to stay out of trouble. He’d slimmed down, become captain of the Boxing Club, and cut down on his drinking. He’d begun mentoring younger Latino students, although in reality that often meant letting them tag along with him to parties.
Dario figured as long as nothing too horrible happened, those were the requisite crazy nights you were supposed to experience at least once at college, nights too many undocumented immigrants shied away from for fear of disappointing their parents or making one false move.
He set one of the boxes on the bed and carefully added his parents’ wedding video, along with blown-up photos of his mother. He would leave the silver box next to his computer, the one that held his mother’s wedding ring and crucifix, for last. Dario tossed into a box the negative results from an HIV test he’d recently taken, unsure of how much health care coverage he’d have after leaving college but presuming it would be good to have. In went the “Thanks, but no thanks” letter from the sperm donor office, his awards, his DACA file, papers, sweaters, a soccer ball.
Downstairs, families buzzed into and out of the dorm, women with elegant bobs, men in navy blue sports jackets who smiled benignly while somehow still making clear they owned the world. Dario avoided the scene and finished packing. He would miss the afternoon pregraduation speaker, Steven Spielberg. Although he had grown up binge watching Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the like, now it felt like a point of pride as a film student to say he found them too predictable. You could time to the minute when a plot turn was likely to happen.
His own film was coming along: the story of his mother’s decline, his experience in Mexico, his parents’ history, all set against the Aztec creation myth. He’d turned in the first half as his senior thesis and received top honors. His dad wanted to see it, but he refused to show it to him. If his dad didn’t like it, Dario wasn’t sure he could bring himself to finish it.
Soon his friend Oscar Velazquez would arrive. The two had gone to high school together, both taking buses across the city to attend their magnet high school. Oscar had studied microbiology at Cornell University and now worked at a Columbia University research lab in Manhattan. He, too, was undocumented. A third high school buddy, Daniel Artiga, was also graduating from Harvard and would join them for the festivities. Dario would spend his la
st couple of nights with these high school friends and other undocumented and immigrant Harvard youths. He’d spent his early years running to and away from this group, but he no longer feared being associated with them. Besides, he now realized he didn’t have a choice. They were linked, and they understood one another.
Dario wondered what it would be like in the fall without his crew. He’d gotten a small fellowship to work on the film and planned to spend the summer in Boston doing just that. For the fall, he’d lined up an internship at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, DC. The Harvard Trustee–run institution had a pre-Columbian collection that might be relevant to the film. He still couldn’t believe it: a year in Washington, in Georgetown, no less, getting to learn about his own history, ancient as it was. He was still waiting for his DACA application to be reinstated, his official identity and the necessary paper to finalize the internship, but at least for now he had the humanitarian parole.
He carefully laid out his clothes for the next day’s official graduation festivities. He glanced over at his wallet on the desk, and he smiled, reminded of the vending machine heist.
A week or so before, Dario and his friends had hijacked the experimental art project of a fellow student who had put the entire contents of his wallet into a school vending machine—an exploration of how commercialized human identity had become.
Dario had heard about the project and had been both captivated and irritated at how much privilege it required to renounce the very documents he so desperately needed. Dario, too, wanted to shout to the world that his identity, the value of his self, was far more than a piece of paper, a driver’s license, but that was a luxury he couldn’t afford.
Instead, he and several other undocumented friends had gotten the rolls of quarters the old-fashioned machine required and bought the entire contents of the wallet. Then they had put up an anonymous ransom note: they would return the items in the wallet only if their classmate could verifiably demonstrate his identity with transcripts, a birth certificate, a personal letter from the young man’s mother, and enough social media posts to prove he’d been in the country for the last five years—a nod to all the requirements they’d had to complete for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. To their surprise, the student agreed. A few exchanges later, and he submitted to a fake “DHS” interview led by a friend of Dario’s pretending to be an immigration officer. The prank ended with a few shared drinks and the return of the wallet and its original contents: credit cards, cash, and a meal plan card, which turned out to be the most essential item in the billfold.
Dario finished the afternoon packing. He wasn’t going to miss all the events. After a quick shower, he donned a crisp white oxford-cloth shirt, jeans, and shiny caramel-colored loafers and galloped down the stairs to join the cocktail already under way in the Leverett quad.
Dario’s trip to Mexico had turned him into a minor celebrity in his dorm. He made the rounds with the assistant deans and professors, but he spent little time with his fellow graduates. Since he’d missed a year of school, this wasn’t his original class, and he’d kept more to himself since his return. He chatted in the shade with the older ladies from the cafeteria staff, who fussed over him in Spanish in between refilling pitchers and tidying tables.
A variety of languages and dialects floated across the green from around the world, as parents ordered their children in near-universal tones to stand up straighter, not to stain their good shirts, to enjoy one of their last afternoons at this hallowed place. Many of the parents had been born outside the United States, but it seemed to Dario that most of the families were important elsewhere. A father might be wearing a kurta instead of a blazer, but in his measured confidence he was the same. They still operated in a different world, and Dario looked on enviously. One day he would no longer have to fake it, either.
Later they packed their boxes into Daniel’s family’s van. Daniel and his father would drive back to California with the graduates’ belongings. Dario’s father had flown in using his driver’s license as ID thanks to a 2015 state law that allowed California to issue licenses to undocumented immigrants. That night the young men went to pick up Dario’s grandfather and uncle from the airport. Dario hadn’t seen either man since he’d left Mexico. He bent down and hugged his grandfather, nearly crushing the small man in the leather jacket and black fedora.
The next day, at the Leverett House graduation ceremony, Dario stood in line on the grass in his black mortarboard and gown, sporting dark sunglasses, and waiting for his name to be called.
“Darrrrrrghio Guerrero,” the faculty dean and physics professor, Howard Georgi, called out, rolling the Spanish “r” with a guttural Russian-like twist, a gesture at once earnest and a reminder of how foreign his name still sounded rolling off the lips of Harvard faculty. Dario didn’t care. As he walked up to receive his diploma, he shook Georgi’s hand, then impulsively hugged him, flashing a peace sign to his family.
“¡Ay güey!” Dario’s father called out, falling back on the all-purpose Mexican equivalent of “dude!” and clapping his son on the back after the ceremony. Andrea leaned against her older brother as he proudly displayed his diploma. Dario tousled her hair as he answered questions from a Telemundo reporter who’d covered his return from Mexico. What would he tell other young immigrants in the country who thought Harvard was out of reach?
It took Dario three tries and a bit of coaching to say what he wanted to in Spanish. “For undocumented immigrants who think this is impossible, they have to visualize their goals, work hard, and they will accomplish it. It might take time, but it’s possible. Anything’s possible!” he said giddily. And in that moment he believed it.
As they headed back to the dorms, women from the janitorial staff stopped Dario, seeking photos with him as if he were a movie star.
“Félicitaciones, hijo!” they cried.
That night, the family went to the Harvard Club for dinner along with hundreds of other proud families. It was their first real reunion without Rocio. There was no empty seat at the table. And yet there was. Dario and his siblings sat at a table against the dark wood-paneled wall and ate mostly in silence, looking around at the other families chatting animatedly, at home there. It was Dario Sr. who had wanted to splurge on the night, but now he wondered if they wouldn’t have had a better time elsewhere. Andrea spilled a cup of water, and her eyes darted nervously to her brother.
“It’s okay,” he said gently and reached over to help her cut her steak. He looked over at his brother and ribbed him about using the appetizer plate for the main buffet. Everyone started complaining about having way too many plates and forks, cracking one another up as they dug into their desserts.
A WEEK BEFORE, Hareth had donned her own cap and black gown, kicking off her sneakers in the car and pulling on her heels just as she arrived at school. She drove alone, ahead of her parents. Hareth knew they would likely be late, maybe arguing, and she didn’t need more stress.
Her graduation from Trinity Washington University in DC, just a few miles from the Capitol, was a more low-key affair. But the button-bursting parental pride emanating from the parents and the nervous smiles of the soon-to-be graduates were the same.
Homemade gold letters on one mortarboard spelled out “WE MADE IT” and spoke for many others. Unlike at Harvard, where graduation seemed all but guaranteed, many of the African American and Latina students alongside Hareth were among the first in their family to receive a college diploma in the United States—or anywhere.
Trinity had once been a popular school among strong, independent white Catholic women from the Northeast looking to come to Washington. But after Georgetown University and other local schools had opened their doors to women, its population had plummeted until the school had begun to recruit minority youths. Now its reputation as an affordable alternative in the nation’s capital was on the rise, its classes once again full.
The changes, which reflected the broader de
mographic shifts under way across the country, had made some alumnae uncomfortable. Many of the graduates that day had worked full-time as they earned their degrees or managed families. Trinity didn’t “look like” the school these alumnae remembered.
A few years before, President Patricia McGuire had finally called them out: “Just beyond our front gates, there are countless women in the city, nation and world who still can reap great benefits from an educational paradigm focused on their success,” she said in a 2008 interview with the local Georgetown Voice. “The fact that the majority of these women happen to be African American and Latina today does not mean that our mission has changed, as some have asked.”1
The Andrades arrived just before the ceremony began. Haziel sat between her parents, holding the slender, elegant hand of her mother and the thick, rough fingers of her father. Claudia was at her national middle school basketball tournament, and Betty discreetly followed the game via WhatsApp even as she listened to the speakers.
The Making of a Dream Page 31
