Banished Men

Front matter

ABIGA

L ANDREWS and the Students of the Mexican Migration Field Research Program

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Contents

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Policed 2. Locked Up and Broken Down 3. Forced Out of Families 4. No Place Called Home 5. Banished 6. Reclaiming Removal

Conclusion: The Opposite of Banishment Is Care

Appendix: Interviewee Demographics Notes References

Preface

I began to work with deported men in Tijuana shortly after I moved to San Diego in 2014. I was already a scholar of gender, state violence, and immigration. But when I wrote my first book on Oaxacan villages and their migrants in Southern California, the research occurred “somewhere else.” At the time, I was a graduate student at Berkeley. Following an old anthropological tradition, I flew in to “the field.” At the end of the project, I left. For my second book, I wanted to work in the same place I lived and loved—the place I thought of as home.

Ihad just been hired as an assistant professor at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD). With the new job, I could no longer travel so simply. In 2016, I had my first child. By the time I started designing this research, I was pregnant again. I craved roots. So, I decided to work in Tijuana, a 25-minute drive from my door. Tijuana epitomized both the violence and vibrance of the relationship between Mexico and the United States. I met many migrants there who felt stranded, even as my own U.S. passport let me cross freely over the border. Still, I hoped that staying nearby would help me show up for the long term, instead of parachuting in and out of the field. I also believed that working locally would facilitate ties with advocacy organizations that could hold me accountable and help me act on my findings. In Undocumented Politics, I had written about the militarization of the US.-Mexico border and the hostility of this region toward migrants. Now, it was time to do something.

As a professor at UCSD, I also got to know extraordinary students from Mexican and Central American immigrant families. They could have been, quite literally, the children of migrants whose stories I told in my earlier book. Many of their parents had moved from Mexico to the US. in the 1990s, undocumented. Some of the students had crossed the border as children themselves. I wanted

X PREFACE to collaborate with such students to understand what our country was doing to immigrant families—and then fight together to change it.

In 2017, I became director of UCSD’s Mexican Migration Field Research Program (MMFRP), which let me bring teaching and research together. The MMFRP is a yearlong sequence of four courses that enrolls 30 undergraduate and 5 to 10 graduate students a year. Spanish-speaking students apply in the summer and spend the year learning about migration and doing original research. Founded by immigration scholar Wayne Cornelius, the MMFRP had been around for more than a decade when I came along. Each year, Dr. Cornelius took students to Mexican sending communities to do surveys. They produced a vast body of coauthored research on Mexico-U.S. migration.’ Incidentally, I participated in the program as a graduate student from 2010 to 2011 and used some of the data we gathered in my first book.

I was thrilled to take over the program, but I also wanted to change it. First, I moved the work “home” to the San Diego-Tijuana border. The border is an acute site of violence and contestation around migration that I felt deserved our attention. Many of my students had grown up here and felt deeply tied to the region. By working near UCSD, we could also show up more consistently than in the past. Second, I began to collaborate with immigration advocates, as partners in the design, implementation, and dissemination of MMFRP research. My team and I worked closely with shelter staff in Tijuana to frame our questions, recruit participants, and evaluate our results.” While aid workers were too overwhelmed to play an extensive role, they taught us to move slowly and listen deeply to those on the ground.

Donald Trump’s election set the stage for this work. When Trump took office, my students and I talked often about the deportations rending their families and home communities. I wanted our research to shed light on this violence. I also wanted MMFRP to position students from immigrant families as experts. I hoped we could build from their experience, empathy, and fluidity between two languages and cultures. I saw the students as bridges from the powerful (but white-dominated) world of U.S. scholarly research to the lives of their immigrant families.

Between 2018 and 2020, 31 students from the MMFRP interviewed deported men (and a few women) in Tijuana, contributing to the 186 interviews that make up this book. Their names are: Breanny Andrade, Samantha Canseco, Nanitzia Comparan Cuadras, Rubi de Lira, Jasmin Divas Villeda, Pamela Elguezabal, Yaneth Escobosa, Nathally Fernandez, Jena Fierro-Hirales, Stephanie Flores, Marisa Garcia Pérez, David Husson, Fatima Khayar Camara, Ana Lopez Ricoy, Cintia Martinez, Janet Miranda Hernandez, Kayleigh Mitchell, Maomi Mojica, Maria Morales, Miriam Nuñez, Frieda Orbach, Zeltzin Pérez Reyes, Itzel Rodríguez, Adrian Rodriguez Valdez, Ziania Ruiz-Marina, Niccolo Sabia, Camila Sánchez, Paulina Santiago-Rodriguez, Karla Trujillo Rogel, Ivette Vargas, and Faviola Zamudio-Diaz. Each did roughly four interviews, earning course credit for their

PREFACE xi work. In summer 2019, I also hired four students from the Tijuana team to interview men in Oaxaca and Mexico City. Undergraduates Samantha Canseco and Camila Hernandez Cruz? led the interviews in Oaxaca, where their parents were from, and PhD students Fatima Khayar Camara and Ana López Ricoy did the same in Mexico City, the place both called home.

From early on, the students were my teachers. Colleagues sometimes ask how I can trust undergraduates to interview “real” respondents. To be sure, students had to learn to secure informed consent, draw out people’s stories, and listen like scholars. Still, their passion and empathy made the research richer and deeper. I do not know how the process would have gone with students from other backgrounds. But there is a certain veneration that comes from hearing a migrant tell of their suffering, especially if that person’s history closely aligns with one’s own. In my experience, the more control I handed over to students, the more they asked questions and came to insights I had not noticed myself.

Working outside a traditional classroom was also inspiring. Most students in the MMFRP had attended underfunded high schools in Southern California. Few were accustomed to academias “hidden curriculum,’ and several struggled with grades.‘ Yet, in migrant shelters, in courtyards filled with men just torn from their lives, these students shined. I watched them connect, laugh, and really hear the words from deported men’s mouths. They built a range of relationships that I could not have created alone. They brought out stories that I, as a privileged, white PhD, might never have heard. In response, many participants shared generously of their lives.

The students did more than interviews. They also shifted the focus of the work, pushing me to feel before I could analyze the lives of deported men. For many students, talking with deportees triggered grief. Interviewees often remarked that students were just like their children. In turn, students frequently saw their fathers or brothers in men we met in Tijuana. Rubi de Lira, a student who joined the program in 2019, spent her childhood fearing that ICE would deport her dad. For her, it hurt too much to write about men like him. Instead, she wrote a report about what it felt like for students from mixed-status families to do research on immigration.

In one example, Rubi described volunteering to staff the phones at a soup kitchen in Tijuana.’ During her shift, two deportees used the free phone to call family in the U.S. The first one spoke with his mother. The second tried three times to reach his daughter in California, failed, and left with tears streaming down his face. Rubi wrote:

I handed [the man] the phone saying he only had five minutes, and maybe two minutes in, he started crying and apologizing for not having called [his mother] sooner, but he had been in an accident and wasn't physically able to. Coming from a machista culture and seeing a grown man crying to his mother sent a chill down my spine and left me sort of paralyzed, unable to process what had just happened. The man kept xii PREFACE apologizing for not having been there for his mom's surgery, but how could he have even changed that? He was deported, with no way to see her. Later, a man came in to call his daughter and after a few calls, he said, “It’s fine. She doesn’t want to talk to me anyway.’ Again, it hit me hard, and my eyes got watery. . . . I could see my own father in their place, and it broke my heart.

Driven by students like Rubi, our team came to focus on the emotional impacts of US. removal.

For such painful work, students needed comprehensive support. Our interviews drew out stories of beatings, psychological torture, and violence against migrants in the United States. Many of my 20- and 21-year-old students had family members surviving the same abuse. If I wanted these students involved, I could not leave trauma to the psychologists, as many professors (and social scientists) are wont to do. I scoured books, therapy resources, and other work on vicarious trauma.° I built a curriculum to train students in trauma-informed interviewing, secondary trauma, and self-care. Today, I do not allow students to do fieldwork until they have been through this training, a process of learning to protect oneself and to heal.

Students also showed me the need for greater community care. Though I am an “expert” on Mexico-U.S. migration, I am a white U.S. citizen. Immigrant students often understood deportation viscerally on a level that I might not. But I learned that if I showed up to listen and practice compassion (literally, feel things together), I could help them connect with each other and realize they were not alone. We started each class with space to debrief and talk about our emotions. We named our trauma and that of respondents. And we had long conversations about violence, state mistreatment, and what we, as scholars, could do.

This process sparked guilt and critique. Most students who participated in the program thought of themselves as marginalized in the United States. In Tijuana, they were in a position of relative privilege, often for the first time. In contrast to deported migrants, students were U.S. citizens or residents, fluent English speakers, and soon-to-be college graduates. This positioning triggered conflicted feelings. Some students worried that our study exploited deported men. Others rejected research entirely, as an enterprise premised on violent relations, such as the ones between the U.S. and Mexico. They also questioned the power I held in our work. After all, I controlled their grades and, in the case of the four paid research assistants, their wages. We started talking about these dynamics in class, discussing and voting on things like whether to pay respondents, how to hand over control to the people we interviewed, and whether to continue doing research at all. Ultimately, their critiques inspired me to eliminate grades in the program and give respondents near total control of the interviews. Today, students grade themselves, using prompts for reflection. In short, the students reframed the program itself.

Latinx students at UCSD, a flagship campus, seemed to embody the myth of successful young immigrant “DREAMers.” They were the crème de la crème

PREFACE xiii of their high schools. Despite the burdens they carried, they had “made it” into the University of California. Many said they felt intense obligations to honor their parents’ struggles by “getting ahead?” Of course, they were human: amid the hard work, some got tired and overwhelmed or flaked out. Still, it was easy to see them with reverence, as if they confirmed the American Dream.

The public often frames deported men as just the reverse: vilified even as highachieving students are venerated.* Echoing stereotypes, some men we met had gang signs on their knuckles or teardrops tattooed under their eyes, to mark the people they'd killed. In person, their appearances resembled the pictures that politicians use to shout about threats of criminal migrants and gangs.’ Many had been in prison.

Yet, my “excellent” immigrant students were not so distant from these deportees. Sometimes, quite literally, we interviewed brothers and other relatives of students at UCSD. The divisions between them seemed almost a matter of chance: the people who appear in these pages had the (bad) luck to be born in Mexico or to come out a boy.

It is not a coincidence that nearly all my students were women and nearly all the people we spoke to were men. U.S. police and carceral institutions beat Latino boys down (in every sense) from the time they reach adolescence. When we spoke to such men, they often insisted that the only thing standing between them and students like mine were accidents of birth, of gender, or of how the state and their neighborhoods saw them. As one young man put it, “I am a DREAMer, too.”

This point came home with “Ever; whose story runs through the text. Ever’s sister Camila, a UCSD undergraduate, worked on this project for more than two years. Their parents left Oaxaca, Mexico for Los Angeles when Ever was only a toddler. Camila was born in LA, a few years after they crossed. By the time Ever turned 13 years old, he had a criminal record. Shortly before Camila enrolled at UCSD, he got locked up and taken away.

Dehumanizing state treatment hits both “sides” of immigrant families. On the surface, Latinx students like mine appear to be thriving. Yet around them looms the U.S. carceral state. At 19 or 20 years old, they, too, were fighting to keep their families together—even to keep them alive. Though students who participated in this project were all U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, about half had undocumented parents and nearly a quarter had a parent or sibling who'd been deported. Sometimes, ICE deported their loved ones while students were in the program. Occasionally, I would get a call from a student saying their uncle or cousin had been arrested. Soon, we were racing around in the night to figure out where ICE had detained them and where along the U.S.-Mexico border they might be let out. As we did, I felt the sting of my students’ longing to keep their loved ones from harm.

One might say the U.S. is failing these students. We are also failing their brothers. Despite the resilience, drive, and intelligence of both the most successful and xiv PREFACE the most criminalized Mexican immigrants, the United States systematically locks up young men and throws them out to the wolves (or cartels, to be more concrete). From a policy standpoint, this practice is deeply shortsighted. My students remember. They are smart and determined. They are highly educated. Most are U.S. citizens, and they will never forget the feeling of having their fathers or brothers ripped from their homes.

Meanwhile, deportation does not make men disappear, as some in the U.S. might hope. My students and I often heard their stories just minutes from San Diego, within sight of its iron gates. We learned that men almost always keep fighting—sometimes formally, for the right to get back to their families, and sometimes informally, for a place to call home. Their siblings, spouses, and children in the U.S. continue to struggle as well. In some cases, they start that fight by telling their stories.

The goal of this book is to elevate deportees voices. As a scholar, a borderdweller, and a mother, I designed and oversaw the research, and I wrote the words. But the book is also the work of my students, whose passion and empathy ripple throughout its pages. In honoring men like their brothers and fathers, my students have told their own stories as well. I have tried to highlight their contributions throughout and to recognize how true understanding comes from the labor of many minds—and the love of many, traumatized hearts. As students insistently showed me, the men we banish are, in fact, our brothers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Above all, I am honored that the men (and women) in this book were willing to share their stories with me and the team of students who helped do the research. Thank you for taking the leap to trust us and give us a part of yourselves. This book is for you.

Second, I feel an incredible debt to the students who brought their hearts and souls to this project: Breanny Andrade, Samantha Canseco, Nanitzia Comparan Cuadras, Rubi de Lira, Jasmin Divas Villeda, Pamela Elguezabal, Yaneth Escobosa, Nathally Fernandez, Jena Fierro-Hirales, Stephanie Flores, Marisa Garcia Pérez, David Husson, Fatima Khayar Camara, Ana Lopez Ricoy, Cintia Martinez, Janet Miranda Hernandez, Kayleigh Mitchell, Maomi Mojica, Maria Morales, Miriam Nuñez, Frieda Orbach, Zeltzin Pérez Reyes, Itzel Rodriguez, Adrian Rodriguez Valdez, Ziania Ruiz-Marina, Niccolo Sabia, Camila Sanchez, Paulina Santiago- Rodriguez, Karla Trujillo Rogel, Ivette Vargas, and Faviola Zamudio-Diaz. In particular, Ana Lopez Ricoy and Fatima Khayar Camara guided the work for its first three years, bringing brilliance and sensitivity to all of our conversations. Camila Hernandez Cruz and Samantha Canseco also did critical interviews in Oaxaca in summer 2019. Later, Ally Orrick, Nathally Fernandez, Samantha Fakhimi, and Inaaya Hassan helped analyze data with care and initiative. This was truly a team effort, and I learned so much from you. The work is richer for your engagement.

Third, none of this would have happened without the NGOs that guided us through the chaotic world of deportation, hosted us, helped frame our questions, and made us feel at home. These include, in Tijuana, the Casa del Migrante, Puente TJ United, Madre Assunta, Desayunador Padre Salesiano, Espacio Migrante, Ejército de Salvación, Templo Embajadores de Jesús, and the YMCA Tijuana.

XV xvi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Father Pat Murphy, Gilberto Martínez, Jose Carlos Yee Quintero, and Valeria Ruiz Griego were especially generous with their time, jokes, and insights. In Mexico City, we got important support from Deportados Unidos en la Lucha, ODA, and New Comienzos. Special thanks to Maggie Laredo and Jill Anderson for taking in Ana for several months. In Oaxaca, Florence Weinberg and Nancy García offered key orientation.

Fourth, I am grateful to the many colleagues who read drafts and gave feedback. This book might not have taken flight had it not been for the brilliant Jennifer Carlson, who offered encouragement, camaraderie, and deeply considered suggestions on every chapter. I also sincerely enjoyed my monthly meetings and chapter swaps with book buddies and fellow pandemic parents, Rebecca Galemba and David Trouille. Thank you to Rebecca for bringing us together. On Zoom, Stephanie Canizales proved a stalwart weekly writing companion, keeping my spirits up.

Several others also played shorter-term roles. Thanks to Katrina Burgess and the Tufts Institute for Migration and Human Security crew for welcoming me into their 2017 workshop on migration in Tijuana; you got this all started! Abi Thornton and Fátima Khayar Cámara, who both attended that workshop and did ethnography at the Casa del Migrante between 2017 and 2019, were also key intellectual partners. Thanks also to Rafael Alarcón Acosta and Laura Velasco Ortiz at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte for early advice. In Mexico City, Robert Irwin and the team from Humanizing Deportation convened a fantastic and formative conference in 2019. Meanwhile, Fidan Elçioglu, Lauren Duquette-Rury, Vanesa Ribas, Joe Wiltberger, Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, and the participants in the UCSD migration workshop gave me important feedback on an early proposal, helping to guide the book. Outside UCSD, the Gender and Power Workshop anchored me in feminist theory and offered crucial direction (with special thanks to Marie Berry, Susila Gurusami, Lynne Haney, Zakiya Luna, Jordanna Matlon, Rhacel Parreñas, Smitha Radhakrishnan, Raka Ray, Poulami Roychowdhury, Leslie Salzinger, Nazanin Shahrokni, and Cinzia Solari). Before submission, Letta Page tackled the whole manuscript with her signature fine-toothed comb. Then, reviewers Jennifer Randles and Nancy Plankey-Videla offered attentive, thoughtful, and quick analyses of the book. Finally, I am thankful to Naomi Schneider for her enthusiasm about the project, to her assistants Aline Dolinh and LeKeisha Hughes for answering questions, to Julie Van Pelt for production support, and to Irina du Quenoy for her careful copyediting.

Fifth, of course, research costs money. This project was funded by a 2018 UCSD Academic Senate Grant, a 2019 UCSD Social Sciences Divisional Research Grant, and a 2019 American Sociological Association Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline Grant, with student involvement supported by the UC-Mexico Initiative (now Alianza UC-MX), a UCSD Changemaker Faculty Fellowship, and staff support from the UCSD Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies and Center for Comparative

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Xvii

Immigration Studies. I am especially grateful to Melissa Floca, Ana Minvielle, David Fitzgerald, Claire Adida, and Kristen Walker for helping me secure and manage this funding. I also appreciate the UCSD Library for providing a grant to make this book Open Access.

Finally, my friends and family have kept my feet on the ground, through the roller coaster of parenting young kids amid COVID-19, Trump, and all the trauma that comes with work at the border. Danielle Raudenbush, Vanesa Ribas, and Amy Lerner gave me a core space of care and camaraderie at UCSD. Ariana Thompson-Lastad, Mary Doyno, and Maria Alejandra Perez offered empathic weekly support. In addition, Isaac Martin, Mirle Rabinowitz Bussell, Leslie Lewis, Keith Pezzoli, Fonna Forman, Teddy Cruz, Cat Lettieri, and Carolyn Sandoval, among others, helped me think about how to weave teaching, research, and social justice in our complex world at the border.

On the home front, I am grateful to Fidan El¢ioglu and Ashley Simonsen for keeping me thinking and laughing through so many years. I couldn't have finished this book without immense patience and extra support from Ben Sanoff, Jane Andrews, Bob Harrington, and Lara Dumont. Mom, thank you for moving to San Diego to help us and for giving me roots, that I might have wings. Ben, thank you for being a steady optimist and loving me through it all. Finally, to Adrian and Amalia, who showed me how deeply a mother can love—and thus, what deported parents have lost. As toddlers, you saw the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border and simply asked “Why?” Trust your instincts. Your generation can (and must) build a better world.