Reunite the Reyes Family!
Donation protected
Friends, I have struggled to write this for some time but my family and I are in desperate need of help. It’s been extremely humbling to be in a place of such need but I have to set my pride aside to guarantee safety for my children and, hopefully, my husband.
The past few years we have faced many hardships, the worst of which was leaving my children in Mexico so I could come to Chicago to find work and get them home by October. So you can fully understand our need, here’s how our story began:
In college, a friend of mine introduced me to her brother. He had newly arrived from Mexico, and could barely speak a word of English. It wasn’t long before she told me that he was interested in me. He was cute, but I wasn’t all that interested at first. I could barely speak Spanish! I have a bad habit of saying hello to a person each and every time they walk into a room, so as Luis would pass through the house I would say hello. He turned bright red and slammed into the refrigerator. It made me laugh, and he did it again. Now I was interested. Not long after, we were going on dates
. He was my first kiss, and my first real boyfriend. He’s the only boyfriend I ever had. 3 months after meeting him, I studied abroad in Japan. When I returned, we had decided to get married, and 5 years later we did. He supported me as much as possible through those years, and he’s the reason I was able to withstand a 19 credit, 175 volunteer hour, 3 different languages semester
.
The only hitch was that he was undocumented. Everyone told us that after marriage, everything would be easy. He would be able to be legalized, and we would be okay. That’s how things used to be, right?
We started out in West Michigan. It wasn’t easy. While we were dating, we were pulled over by the police in our small town, who always demanded to know where my husband was “really” from. I was followed everywhere, pulled over at least once a month, and found out that I had been marked as a suspicious person. Mind you, I was a good Catholic who went to Mass, school, and work. My only “crime” was being white, and dating a brown Spanish speaking guy. I will never forgive realizing that most of the time when I was pulled over, it was because my husband was with me. I had to tell him to lay down in the seat when we passed through the main intersection of town, because the police would always shine a light into my car, looking for him. I used to trust police, but now I am as cautious with them as I am with any gang member- some are wonderful people, some aren’t, and there isn’t an easy way to know the difference. I was followed for years, until suddenly, it finally ended. I am still scared.
When the campaign for 2016 was ramping up, my husband and I were trying to get everything together to get him legalized. We had many difficulties and it wasn’t nearly as easy as everyone had told us it would be. I had to earn a high enough income, and I couldn’t. People who could have sponsored us weren’t willing to do so. People who were willing were too poor. I began looking for a job in a higher income area, and that was when my hometown started to have informal mini-parades of trucks emblazoned with “Trump”, obnoxious Confederate flags, and other hostile signs. I remembered girls I went to school with that were proud of family that had been in the KKK. I wondered how long it would be before I had to worry about being shot at, or my kids being bullied at school for being “mixed”. I landed a better paying job on the other side of the state, and moved our family. By this time, we had 2 children, and 1 on the way.
We thought that things would get better, but then Trump was elected, and it got worse. I saw ICE many times, sometimes at the grocery store, more often on the way to work. People began to harass us in the grocery store for speaking Spanish to our children, and I was told at more than one church to go find a Latino church to attend Mass. My husband tried to learn English, but was called racial slurs by a neighbor for even trying. A random woman at a burger joint accused me of “not even being American” because I spoke Spanish so well. To make matters worse, I learned that even though I had achieved an income a little higher than necessary to be a sponsor, I would have to be at that job for 3 years before it could “count” as enough to sponsor my husband. People who were coming to their green card and marriage interviews were being arrested for attempting to become legal. Families were and are being ripped apart, and there’s a large number of people who are gleeful that children just like mine will not be able to see their parents for years, or possibly forever.
We despaired. We were sick of constantly living in fear, and thought we could make it in Mexico. We thought that at least there, we wouldn’t be ripped apart, the kids would never have to worry about ICE following their bus home to entrap their father, and that we could live in peace without anyone making a big deal about the kids being a mix of ethnicities. I gave birth in Mexico to my fourth child, and the best I can say about the experience is that it was quick. I wasn’t allowed to bathe after giving birth, and we weren’t even allowed toilet paper unless our families bought it from the hospital store at an inflated price. On a good day, my husband can only earn about $5, assuming that work is even available. That is not enough to raise a family on. I tried to find a job, but found out the hard way that even a bachelor’s degree isn’t valued in Mexico. I breastfed, but then I noticed that my baby was losing weight and wouldn’t stop crying. Because we didn’t have much more to eat other than tortillas, salsa, and beans, I couldn’t produce enough milk. Formula costs more than a day’s work in Mexico. There is no running water in our town there, so we would also have to buy water from the city. So many other babies in town get sick from drinking formula because the water has parasites to the point that Seguro Popular comes by every so often with medication intended to kill parasites in youngsters. My kids are resilient and are adapting as best they can, but my daughter has a speech delay. There is little understanding of what that even is, much less support, so education is severely lacking. I’m ashamed to say that my kids have learned what it means to not have enough money for anything, so it has been difficult to teach them that money does not equal happiness. When you can’t even buy a pack of cookies for your kids, that lesson gets lost.
When I ran out of milk and had to switch to formula, we decided that I had to come back to the United States. Making that decision was terrible. I couldn’t bring my children with me. A family member had agreed to take me in, but there was not enough room for all of the kids. We also didn’t have enough money to bring us all up at once. We begged and borrowed, and I kept telling myself to be humble. We scraped together the money to apply for a passport for my youngest, and got the money for a bus ticket. I cried as I left, but I had to turn off my emotions. My mantra was to focus on the positive. On the way up, I worked on my resume. I couldn’t sleep. I wanted my husband. I missed my kids. I felt gutted.
The day after I arrived in Chicago, I sent my resume everywhere. A friend helped me out with clothing and I went to interviews. Within 3 weeks, I had landed a temp job. 6 weeks after that I landed a permanent job closer to where an incredibly generous family member is allowing me to stay. I am apartment hunting, child care hunting, and doing everything I can to earn more money and secure a safe place for us all. I need them to be here, and they need me. They have no hope of a good education in our Mexican small town. My husband is constantly worried for them, because there are scorpions and venomous spiders everywhere, and the kids can’t really play around like they should because of that. Unless they go to a major city, good doctors are hard to find. When you can find them, they are expensive. My daughter has teeth that are growing in extremely crooked and needs a dentist. My baby cries when he sees me on Facebook calls. He wants me to pick him up. I haven’t held him in months. I get maybe 4 hours of sleep on a good night, because I can’t stop worrying about and missing my husband and the kids.
There is hope that Luis can come back, too. After so long we have finally found a good lawyer. Because my husband entered undocumented into the United States so many years ago, he isn’t able to return unless he obtains a pardon. This process will take 2 years, a lot of paperwork, and a lot of money to our lawyer and to the government. We have to prove hardship from him being absent in my life. How his absence affects our children doesn’t matter to the government, but I can prove a lot of hardship, as well as how we were unable to make things work in Mexico.
We are asking for help in getting our 4 American citizen kids out of a desperate situation in Mexico, paying for the lawyer fees, and getting us started. If by some miracle we exceed our goal and have no other emergency need, I want to put the money towards helping other families that are trying to reunite.
I say thank you for any and all help in advance, and welcome prayers from all different faiths (or good vibes from those of no particular faith). Here’s to hoping things get better!
The past few years we have faced many hardships, the worst of which was leaving my children in Mexico so I could come to Chicago to find work and get them home by October. So you can fully understand our need, here’s how our story began:
In college, a friend of mine introduced me to her brother. He had newly arrived from Mexico, and could barely speak a word of English. It wasn’t long before she told me that he was interested in me. He was cute, but I wasn’t all that interested at first. I could barely speak Spanish! I have a bad habit of saying hello to a person each and every time they walk into a room, so as Luis would pass through the house I would say hello. He turned bright red and slammed into the refrigerator. It made me laugh, and he did it again. Now I was interested. Not long after, we were going on dates
. He was my first kiss, and my first real boyfriend. He’s the only boyfriend I ever had. 3 months after meeting him, I studied abroad in Japan. When I returned, we had decided to get married, and 5 years later we did. He supported me as much as possible through those years, and he’s the reason I was able to withstand a 19 credit, 175 volunteer hour, 3 different languages semester. The only hitch was that he was undocumented. Everyone told us that after marriage, everything would be easy. He would be able to be legalized, and we would be okay. That’s how things used to be, right?
We started out in West Michigan. It wasn’t easy. While we were dating, we were pulled over by the police in our small town, who always demanded to know where my husband was “really” from. I was followed everywhere, pulled over at least once a month, and found out that I had been marked as a suspicious person. Mind you, I was a good Catholic who went to Mass, school, and work. My only “crime” was being white, and dating a brown Spanish speaking guy. I will never forgive realizing that most of the time when I was pulled over, it was because my husband was with me. I had to tell him to lay down in the seat when we passed through the main intersection of town, because the police would always shine a light into my car, looking for him. I used to trust police, but now I am as cautious with them as I am with any gang member- some are wonderful people, some aren’t, and there isn’t an easy way to know the difference. I was followed for years, until suddenly, it finally ended. I am still scared.
When the campaign for 2016 was ramping up, my husband and I were trying to get everything together to get him legalized. We had many difficulties and it wasn’t nearly as easy as everyone had told us it would be. I had to earn a high enough income, and I couldn’t. People who could have sponsored us weren’t willing to do so. People who were willing were too poor. I began looking for a job in a higher income area, and that was when my hometown started to have informal mini-parades of trucks emblazoned with “Trump”, obnoxious Confederate flags, and other hostile signs. I remembered girls I went to school with that were proud of family that had been in the KKK. I wondered how long it would be before I had to worry about being shot at, or my kids being bullied at school for being “mixed”. I landed a better paying job on the other side of the state, and moved our family. By this time, we had 2 children, and 1 on the way.
We thought that things would get better, but then Trump was elected, and it got worse. I saw ICE many times, sometimes at the grocery store, more often on the way to work. People began to harass us in the grocery store for speaking Spanish to our children, and I was told at more than one church to go find a Latino church to attend Mass. My husband tried to learn English, but was called racial slurs by a neighbor for even trying. A random woman at a burger joint accused me of “not even being American” because I spoke Spanish so well. To make matters worse, I learned that even though I had achieved an income a little higher than necessary to be a sponsor, I would have to be at that job for 3 years before it could “count” as enough to sponsor my husband. People who were coming to their green card and marriage interviews were being arrested for attempting to become legal. Families were and are being ripped apart, and there’s a large number of people who are gleeful that children just like mine will not be able to see their parents for years, or possibly forever.
We despaired. We were sick of constantly living in fear, and thought we could make it in Mexico. We thought that at least there, we wouldn’t be ripped apart, the kids would never have to worry about ICE following their bus home to entrap their father, and that we could live in peace without anyone making a big deal about the kids being a mix of ethnicities. I gave birth in Mexico to my fourth child, and the best I can say about the experience is that it was quick. I wasn’t allowed to bathe after giving birth, and we weren’t even allowed toilet paper unless our families bought it from the hospital store at an inflated price. On a good day, my husband can only earn about $5, assuming that work is even available. That is not enough to raise a family on. I tried to find a job, but found out the hard way that even a bachelor’s degree isn’t valued in Mexico. I breastfed, but then I noticed that my baby was losing weight and wouldn’t stop crying. Because we didn’t have much more to eat other than tortillas, salsa, and beans, I couldn’t produce enough milk. Formula costs more than a day’s work in Mexico. There is no running water in our town there, so we would also have to buy water from the city. So many other babies in town get sick from drinking formula because the water has parasites to the point that Seguro Popular comes by every so often with medication intended to kill parasites in youngsters. My kids are resilient and are adapting as best they can, but my daughter has a speech delay. There is little understanding of what that even is, much less support, so education is severely lacking. I’m ashamed to say that my kids have learned what it means to not have enough money for anything, so it has been difficult to teach them that money does not equal happiness. When you can’t even buy a pack of cookies for your kids, that lesson gets lost.
When I ran out of milk and had to switch to formula, we decided that I had to come back to the United States. Making that decision was terrible. I couldn’t bring my children with me. A family member had agreed to take me in, but there was not enough room for all of the kids. We also didn’t have enough money to bring us all up at once. We begged and borrowed, and I kept telling myself to be humble. We scraped together the money to apply for a passport for my youngest, and got the money for a bus ticket. I cried as I left, but I had to turn off my emotions. My mantra was to focus on the positive. On the way up, I worked on my resume. I couldn’t sleep. I wanted my husband. I missed my kids. I felt gutted.
The day after I arrived in Chicago, I sent my resume everywhere. A friend helped me out with clothing and I went to interviews. Within 3 weeks, I had landed a temp job. 6 weeks after that I landed a permanent job closer to where an incredibly generous family member is allowing me to stay. I am apartment hunting, child care hunting, and doing everything I can to earn more money and secure a safe place for us all. I need them to be here, and they need me. They have no hope of a good education in our Mexican small town. My husband is constantly worried for them, because there are scorpions and venomous spiders everywhere, and the kids can’t really play around like they should because of that. Unless they go to a major city, good doctors are hard to find. When you can find them, they are expensive. My daughter has teeth that are growing in extremely crooked and needs a dentist. My baby cries when he sees me on Facebook calls. He wants me to pick him up. I haven’t held him in months. I get maybe 4 hours of sleep on a good night, because I can’t stop worrying about and missing my husband and the kids.
There is hope that Luis can come back, too. After so long we have finally found a good lawyer. Because my husband entered undocumented into the United States so many years ago, he isn’t able to return unless he obtains a pardon. This process will take 2 years, a lot of paperwork, and a lot of money to our lawyer and to the government. We have to prove hardship from him being absent in my life. How his absence affects our children doesn’t matter to the government, but I can prove a lot of hardship, as well as how we were unable to make things work in Mexico.
We are asking for help in getting our 4 American citizen kids out of a desperate situation in Mexico, paying for the lawyer fees, and getting us started. If by some miracle we exceed our goal and have no other emergency need, I want to put the money towards helping other families that are trying to reunite.
I say thank you for any and all help in advance, and welcome prayers from all different faiths (or good vibes from those of no particular faith). Here’s to hoping things get better!
Organizer
Angela Reyes
Organizer
Chicago, IL
