For the Sake of the U.S. Children of Immigration

By Anna Alicia Chavez, JSRI Migration Specialist

Among the many childhood memories I have is one of the day my mother was detained at the entry port of the U.S.-Mexico border. It was a late Saturday evening and we were headed back home after a splendid day spent with our family in Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas. As we approached the inspection station, my mother became very nervous realizing that she had forgotten her green card at home. I remember all five of us children looking out the rear window of our van as my dad drove off, leaving my mother in the hands of the border patrol while we went home to get her green card. How scared we all were, asking my father a hundred questions and never quite understanding why we would have to leave my mother with those authorities whom we believed to be police. We cried all the way home believing my mother was in grave trouble with the law and imagining that she would surely be put in jail for who knows what.

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