Undocumented”
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Documenting the “Undocumented” An Ethnography of DACA from Southern Michigan by Julia Hickey Undergraduate Thesis in Anthropology University of Michigan Winter 2014 Faculty Advisor: Jason De León © 2014 Julia Hickey To Rosa and Isabel, for welcoming me into their America. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I never would have set out to write this thesis if not for the inspiration and support of my advisor, Jason De León. It was in his classes that I first started to think critically about what it means to live “undocumented” in this country. I am grateful to Jason for teaching me how to engage in anthropology that explores people’s lived experiences of the intricacies and ironies of United States immigration law and policy. I am equally indebted to Cyrus O’Brien for his kind encouragement and patient dedication to helping me write the best thesis possible. His thoughtful comments and insightful questions have enriched this thesis beyond measure. I am thankful for the guidance of Erik Mueggler and for the suggestions and moral support of the SocioCult. The challenges of thesis writing always seemed a little less daunting from our shared seats in windowless sauna. This thesis received generous support from both the Honors Program and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. The Honors Summer Fellows Program allowed me the opportunity to define and refine my thesis project in the company of incredible Honors students from a wide range of disciplines across the University. The Honors Program additionally financed some of the many miles I logged driving across the state to conduct interviews for my thesis. The Department of Anthropology made it possible for me to present a poster based on this thesis research at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. I thank my friends, my parents, and my sister for their interest in my thesis project and their continual encouragement. They helped me to see this project through from first thought to final page. Most of all, I want to acknowledge the people who enriched this thesis and my life by sharing their stories with me. Their openness and resilience never ceases to amaze me. I am privileged to have been welcomed into their histories and their lives, and I hope that their futures afford them the security to live life freely and fully. CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Discovering DACA 13 Chapter 2: Doing Self-Documentation 43 Chapter 3: Living DACAmented 75 Conclusion 99 Notes 103 References Cited 107 INTRODUCTION Early in the afternoon on Friday, June 15, 2012, a beautiful summer day in Washington, President Obama and his domestic policy staff gathered in the White House Rose Garden to hold a press conference. Over the chirping of songbirds, Obama welcomed the small crowd and began his prepared address. He announced that his administration would be making changes to the nation’s immigration policy to make it “more fair, more efficient, and more just…for certain young people sometimes called ‘DREAMers’” (White House 2012). Effective immediately, at the directive of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano, “certain young people who were brought to the United States as young children, do not present a risk to national security or public safety, and meet several key criteria” would be eligible for deferred action—meaning, relief from the possibility of being deported—for two years, subject to renewal, and they would be eligible to apply for work authorization (DHS 2012). The new process, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, would be implemented by DHS “over the next few months” (White House 2012). ******* Halfway across the country, in Michigan, Sergio was on his way to Lansing from his home in Grand Rapids, to attend an event at a nonprofit organization he used to work for. En route, he received a text message from a friend, asking him if he knew about the announcement President Obama had made earlier that day, about a change in immigration policy. No, Sergio replied, he had not heard about it. His friend messaged back with more details: apparently some undocumented people would now be able to apply to get a work permit and a Social Security number. Sergio’s first reaction was skepticism. He had spent the past ten years living as an undocumented person in the United States—no driver’s license, no passport, no Social Security card, no employment authorization. He and his family migrated to Michigan from Mexico when Sergio was just eleven years old. Sergio grew up attending public schools in west Michigan and he speaks English confidently, although he considers Spanish to be his better language. Like many other undocumented young people, 1 Sergio is proud of his heritage, but he thinks of himself as an American, even if he does not have official United States citizenship. He feels a swell of pride when he sings “The Star Spangled Banner” in school and at sporting events; sometimes he gets the impression that his patriotism upsets people who know about his unlawful status. Sergio’s encounters with these kinds of attitudes never discouraged him from being a vocal advocate for immigrants’ rights. During high school, he worked with various state and national nonprofits as a community organizer, campaigning for immigration reform. Just after his graduation in 2011, the fight became much more personal for Sergio: his father was apprehended and deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). His mother returned to Mexico soon thereafter, taking Sergio’s younger siblings with her. Rather than give up on his dream of becoming a U.S. citizen, Sergio stayed in Michigan with his older brother and started to share their story in increasingly public settings, hoping to spread awareness about the impacts of current immigration policy on families living in the United States. He spoke at public schools and universities, conferences, and churches. Then, in 2012, Sergio’s older brother was arrested by ICE and put in deportation proceedings. With the help of activist friends, Sergio and his brother hired an attorney to fight the deportation order, ultimately to no avail. His older brother was deported to Mexico, and Sergio found himself alone in the United States. Despite the emotional upheaval caused by his separation from his family, Sergio still desperately wanted to live his life here in the United States, his home. So when Sergio’s friend told him that President Obama had announced a change in immigration policy that would allow some undocumented people to apply for official papers that would allow them to live and work in the United States, Sergio was sure the news was too good to be true. From his phone in the car, he logged onto Facebook to check the pages of various immigration organizations and the posts of fellow undocumented friends. And there it was, they were all talking about it: the DACA program— Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. ******* 2 DACA IN CONTEXT The President’s announcement of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and his promise that the new process would be swiftly implemented speaks to the political expedience of DACA for the Obama administration as the 2012 election approached. During the first term of Obama’s presidency, campaign pledges of comprehensive immigration reform did not result in any changes in U.S. immigration law. The Development, Relief, and Education of Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act—which would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented high school graduates and GED recipients who attend college or serve in the armed forces—once again failed to pass in Congress when it came up for a vote in 2010 (IPC 2011a). Undocumented young people who would qualify for this pathway to legal status, commonly referred to as “DREAMers,” became increasingly disheartened. Their worries grew as they witnessed the threat of deportation actually increase during Obama’s presidency (Gonzales and Chavez 2012; see also Medrano 2010 and Slevin 2010); in the fiscal year preceding the 2012 election, the administration deported an “unprecedented 409,849 people” (Dade 2012).1 Politically active DREAMers responded by agitating for relief from deportation with increasing volume and coordination, staging marches, sit-ins, and rallies near campaign offices and immigrant detention centers (Jordan 2012). Many Hispanic and Latino voters shared in the DREAMers’ frustration and disappointment with the President’s failure to act on immigration reform during his first term in office (Dade and Halloran 2012). By granting temporary relief from deportation to DREAMers through DACA, Obama was able to address mounting criticism from the most vocal contingent of the immigrant population and symbolically reaffirm his administration’s commitment to comprehensive immigration reform on the eve of the election. The DACA process certainly came to fruition at a politically opportune moment, but the practice of granting deferred action to certain undocumented people also builds on previous policy changes by the Obama administration. In early 2011, the administration launched a series of initiatives to restructure how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enforces immigration law. John Morton, Director of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), issued a memorandum in March 2011 identifying “national security, public safety, and border security” as the agency’s “highest enforcement priorities” 3 and directing all ICE employees to concentrate enforcement, detention, and removal resources on “aliens who pose a danger to national security or a risk to public safety” (Morton 2011a). In June 2011, Morton issued another memo explaining how ICE personnel should “exercise prosecutorial discretion to ensure that the agency's immigration enforcement resources are focused on the agency's enforcement priorities” (Morton 2011b). As Morton defines it, prosecutorial discretion is “the authority of an agency charged with enforcing a law to decide to what degree to enforce the law against a particular individual” (Morton 2011b).