Undocumented Immigrants In Chicago's Suburbs: 'A Better Life'

CHICAGO HEIGHTS, IL — Maria had two options: let the man who beat her sister come back to Chimalhuacán to pick up the toddler the couple left behind, or cross the Mexican border herself to make sure her brother-in-law did not use his son to hold her sister hostage in the United States. He had done it before. Maria wasn’t going to let him do it again.

She was healthy. Gutsy. Naive. She could make the trek. At 19, Maria could see one clear path ahead: Save her sister.

So she crossed the border with her nephew in her arms, escorted by the man she and her family hated. No phone. No money. No papers.

“What else was I going to do?” she asked.

That was almost 30 years ago. Maria now lives in the south suburbs of Cook County with her husband and four children, one of the 425,000 undocumented immigrants who have settled in the Chicago metropolitan area. And, like most of them, she is counting down the hours until Sunday, when President Donald Trump said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will carry out mass arrests of immigrants with final removal orders in as many as 10 cities across the nation, Chicago among them.

What Maria did not know when she crossed the border with the man she thought was a monster was that she, too, would stay in the U.S., and over time she would fight her own devils here. And she never would have guessed that reuniting her sister with her son would foreshadow the single greatest fear of her life: What will happen to my children if I am taken away from them?

“I might look happy, but inside, I cry,” she said.

Maria, an eternal optimist buoyed by her steadfast faith in God, prefers not to cry. Once, when her young children asked her why they couldn’t go to Mexico, she joked: “Because I might like it too much and have to stay.” She couldn’t bear them shouldering the worry. But now, three days before the Sunday raids, the worry is so heavy, her daughter Carmen holds it up like a mirror, the fear in reverse: What will happen to you if you are taken away from me?

At 20, Carmen, a U.S. citizen, had seen people in her life deported before: her neighbors, her friend’s mother’s boyfriend, her cousin. All loved ones. Disappeared. Would her mother be next?

“I feel like I am the reason my mother is stuck,” she said. “We’re stuck and I am in the middle and we can’t do anything about it.”

For the first time in her life, as they sat at the dining room table talking about the upcoming deportations, Carmen saw her mother’s eyes mist.

Maria looked away.

Suburban immigration
“Maria” and “Carmen” are not their real names. Patch is withholding the women’s identities because Maria and her husband fear they will be deported as part of the impending ICE raids.

Their story is not about urban laborers sleeping in the attic of a restaurant to avoid detection or about the strawberry picker traveling from field to field. Maria, Carmen and their family members are the faces of everyday suburban folks who go to work, go to church, shop at the market, send their kids to school, take vacations and pay taxes. The only thing that separates Maria and her husband from their neighbors, is that they are living in the south suburbs without proper U.S. documentation.

Across Illinois, undocumented people make up about 3 percent of the state’s total population — although most of that is concentrated near Chicago — and 5 percent of the workforce. Statistics from the Pew Research Center show that overall, the number of migrants moving to the area is down about 22 percent from its peak in 2007. However the numbers of those who live and work in the south suburbs, including Chicago Heights, Calumet City and Lansing, is increasing.

“Immigration is a suburban issue,” said Lorena Varela, executive director of Comunidad En Acción, or Community In Action, a Chicago Heights-based nonprofit that offers immigration services, youth outreach and educational workshops to Hispanic families in the south suburbs. It is one of the few immigration resources available in the area.

What that means to Varela, Carmen and others, is that no one is paying attention to the needs of the south suburbs. The way they see it, the families who are trying to do the right thing, trying to be good citizens — trying to be citizens — can’t get the help they need. And they’re being penalized for being good community members.

“It is inhuman,” Varela said.

Chimalhuacán
Maria had no plans to migrate to the United States. Life was not easy in Chimalhuacán, a barrio bajo, where residents rigged their own warren of houses, rebar hanging like talons from concrete walls, ready for another floor when there was more money or people — whichever came first.

Maria’s family drew water from a well dug in the floor to drink or to bathe in, and even today, there is no running water in much of the Mexico City suburb. Raised by a single mom, Maria dropped out of school to work to help support her nine other siblings.

Even so, she was happy. She was making good money sewing clothes for American Girl dolls. She dreamed of going back to school.

But then her sister married a man who beat her. When the family tried to get her to leave him, he forced her to go to the United States. Just put a bathing suit on and walk across the beach. Don’t worry about it. So her sister did, crossing a ragged Tijuana shoreline onto the clean sands of California. She left her 2-year-old son in Chimalhuacán with her family.

A year later, Maria’s brother-in-law came back to pick up his son. But by now, her sister’s situation was worse. She’d given birth to a new baby in the U.S., a boy her husband once kidnapped when she threatened to leave. Now that the man was coming back to reclaim what was his, the family needed to ensure the toddler would end up safe in his mother’s arms.

Maria planned to stay one year and one year only. She’d reunite with her sister, help her escape, bring her home and help her get divorced. She’d heard she could make $35 an hour cleaning hotels. She’d make some money and bring it all back home.

So she made the trip hundreds of thousands of others did, crossing the desert, hiding underwater to avoid detection, dodging cars across the highway with immigration officers chasing her close behind. She made it to Santa Monica and flew to Chicago. She never saw Mexico again.

Part of the reason was because she did save her sister. But they had to flee to a women’s shelter on Chicago’s South Side and spend time there to extricate her sister from the disastrous marriage. And the other reason? She fell in love with a man she met in church and married him.

She thought she was doing the right thing: The man’s father was sponsoring his citizenship. Two years later, the young couple learned the process was stopped because the man got married. They were blindsided, Maria said. Still, they had hope. Something would change.

And so they lived. They had babies — two boys, two girls. They worked. They sent money home to Chimalhuacán. They built a life for their little family in the south suburbs, even though they knew they knew they were wrong.

“It was a better life here for them,” she said.

The truth
When Carmen was in third grade, she noticed other people taking vacations on airplanes and asked, why can’t we go? Her older brothers chimed in. Why can’t we fly to Florida? Why do we always drive everywhere?

At first, Maria would tease. Oh, we’re saving our money, she said. But when the kids persisted, Maria said she and her husband knew it was time to tell the children about their legal status. They had never lied about it, she said, but they kept it quiet.

For example, she and her husband worked, mostly cash jobs, and paid taxes using an ITIN, or Individual Tax Identification Number. the Internal Revenue Service gives that number to people who do not have or are not eligible to have a social security number so they can pay taxes. They’re given regardless of immigration status, but having one is a flag that you don’t have your papers.

Then there was the time about 10 years ago when Maria was driving, as she always did, to take the kids to school or to go to work, and police pulled her over for speeding — something Maria was careful not to do. Do you have a license, the officer asked. No, she said. Why? I don’t have my papers, she said.

Carmen, meanwhile, wailed in the backseat, terrified that the officer was going to snatch her mother out of the car and take her away. The officer glanced at Carmen, Maria recalled, and handed her a ticket. Maria showed up at the Markham courthouse. The judge asked her if she could pay the ticket. She said yes. He asked when. She told him that day. And she walked out. Free.

So by the time Maria sat her kids down to tell them the news, it was more like a confirmation for Carmen. The driving, the disappearing people, the silence all made sense now. But the burden Maria wanted to shield her children from fell on Carmen’s shoulders.

“I worry every day,” she said.

Maria said she and her husband have tried to fix their mistakes and correct their records. They paid six attorneys over the decades for help — like the one who took their $1,000 and sent them an empty envelope marked “immigration.” That attorney disappeared. The new one so far has taken only $400, and has called her husband to come in for the fingerprints he already gave three times.

The children can’t help. The two sons who are older than 21 can’t sponsor visas because Maria and her husband lived in the country unlawfully for longer than six months. The children could try again if Maria and her husband go back to Mexico and stay there, under the law, for 10 years. But even then there’s no guaranteed reentry into the country. That’s why Carmen feels stuck. There’s nothing she can do to help her parents. Her parents feel like they cannot leave her.

Chicago Area Braces For ICE Raids

“It hurts my heart,” Carmen said as she fought back tears. “But I will fight. I will have hope.”

This weekend, the women said, they will refuse to let the threats of raids paralyze them with fear. After all, Maria said, that’s what the announcement was designed to do: Scare the hell out of them. They will be careful, but they’ll go shopping. Maria will play in the sun with her grandkids. On Sunday, they’ll go to church.

Maria pulled a photo up on her phone, the one she took while she was on vacation last year. In the rectangle frame, Maria, her husband, and their two friends pose before an iron gate. Four undocumented immigrants, standing in front of the White House.

Smiling.