Written by Ellen Atkinson
“Welcome to my cage,” said Tania Chavez, Special Projects Coordinator at LUPE. LUPE is an organization founded by Cesar Chavez, the champion of farmworker rights. Composed of 7,000 members in the Rio Grande Valley, LUPE harnesses the power of its community members to collectively solve problems facing their own communities. Their development model is one of resilience, based on the belief that they cannot wait for someone else to solve their problems for them.
During Block 7, the Globalization and Immigration class taught by Sociology Professor Eric Popkin travelled to McAllen, Texas. Chavez spent a week with the class, helping them understand the Rio Grande Valley.
Chavez stood next to the wall, while a border patrol car hovered down the dusty road. The road curved protectively around a stretch of land between where the class stood, and the border with Mexico; the Rio Grande River. On the other side of the fence was technically a part of the United States, but in many ways was separate.
Chavez cannot return to Mexico and cannot go further north than the closest checkpoint because she is an undocumented citizen, a law-abiding taxpayer doing social work and community development.
The class prepared for the trip by reading about NAFTA, neoliberalism, and asylum seekers.
To many of the students taking the class, McAllen, Texas resembled Mexico. One day, the class heard first-hand from a woman who serves as a pro bono lawyer for unaccompanied children fleeing the homicide-ridden countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador at ProBAR, the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project. ProBAR provides legal assistance to those seeking asylum in South Texas by the United States government.
The class met tearful Dreamers praising the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and praying for the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), and had a meeting with a tightly wound lawyer, Jennifer Harbury. Harbury’s husband was captured in 1992 by Guatemalan military trained by the CIA, tortured for three years, then thrown out of a helicopter and dismembered all over a sugar cane field. This same lawyer is tackling birth certificate legislation; without a birth certificate, children naturalized with citizenship in the U.S. may be denied access to education and health care.
The class met with refugees and heard harrowing stories of girls raped and boys recruited and threatened by gang members in their home countries. Families told stories of being deported back to the violence they were fleeing, only to have family members killed within the week. Refugees explained that their chances of being allowed to stay in country legally are extremely low.
ProBAR lawyer, Emily Bartholomew spoke to class and said, “It’s not illegal to be a refugee – just because someone doesn’t have papers doesn’t make them illegal.”
Tania Chavez parents sent her and her brother alone to the United States to get an education. Her brother’s dream was to go to college, but on a trip to visit their parents, her brother was shot and killed. After that, Chavez was determined to fulfill her brother’s dream by getting a higher education, but college did not remove Tania’s barriers. She lost her job because she was undocumented.
Before 9/11 and the increase of militarization of the border, Chavez used to visit her family all the time, crossing between McAllen and Reynosa. Currently, the risk is too high for her to visit them. Chavez almost did not qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
“I helped hundreds of kids get their DACA and I can never get mine,” she told the class, reflecting on her experience. As her visa was about to expire, she returned to an embassy in Mexico to comply with visa renewal, only to have the renewal of her visa disqualify her from temporary status. Without the status, as an undocumented person, Chavez could be fired or deported.
“I am a privileged kid, but my privilege came at a price,” said Chavez, wiping away silent tears. Chavez has dedicated her life to helping those like her, because she knows the trial and hardship involved in sacrificing one’s life for safety or a shot at education.
Chavez hoped that in speaking with the class, she would be able to encourage more to advocate for immigration reform. Eric Popkin’s class left McAllen with a sense of the atrocities perpetrated by border politics, but more questions than answers in terms of a solution to this ongoing and politically polarizing issue.