Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

As a publicly undocumented person, the author has been practicing “radical transparency” (118). While he has been criticized by many people, he continues to do what he has always done: ask questions. In 2012, after revealing his undocumented status, he hears nothing from the authorities. Perturbed, the author calls Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and demands clarification about his future. He is placed on hold. In 2013, the author is asked by the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify as part of a push toward immigration reform. With no information forthcoming from ICE, the author agrees. He takes friends and family members with him and reads his testimony to a packed hearing room. He laments that undocumented people are treated as statistics rather than individuals. He details the lies he told and the help he received. He reads from a book by John F. Kennedy. Then, he goes off script and begins asking the senators questions: what do they want to hear? What do they want to do with undocumented people? How do they define “American?” He receives little response from Republican senators. Despite this blanket of silence, the author would later discover that ICE was disinterested in him because he had never been arrested. All he hears from them is “no comment.”

Checking his emails while stuck in traffic, the author is shocked to see a message asking whether he is ready to buy a home. He wonders whether it is a joke. By 2017, he is in Los Angeles. California is one of 11 states that now allow undocumented people to apply for a driver’s license. Incensed by the email, knowing that undocumented people cannot apply for a mortgage, he calls the number provided and accuses the woman on the end of the line of “cruel and unnecessary” (122) advertisements. She interrupts to ask whether he is “an illegal.” The author reflects on what he is permitted to do and what he cannot, which includes voting.

The author thinks about the intimate relationships in his life. He has spent so long separated from his mother and has always felt that he was burdening his friends and mentors. Romantic, long-term relationships are not possible. The author has long struggled with emotional and physical intimacy; when someone gets close, he hides or runs away. He had hoped that coming out as an undocumented person who help this habit, but it has not. He has even begun to separate himself from his friends. This includes Jake, whom he met in 2007. The two became close over the years, so much so that Jake became an important partner at Define American. In 2015, Jake died. The author struggles, wanting to apologize for all of the time that he was “not present enough” (126). When Jake’s widow Christina gives birth to a baby boy, the author keeps cancelling his plans to visit. Eventually, Christina writes him an email. She chides him for being so distant but makes sure to assure the author that she will always be there for him. The author re-reads the email often, wondering when he will stop running from those people who love him most.

Shortly before Donald Trump is inaugurated, the author is told by his friendly building manager that—in the event that immigration agents arrive—he is not sure whether he can hide the author. It may be safer, the building manager says, if the author moves out. Trump’s signaled intentions have led many friends and associates to pass along warnings to the author. He is advised not to travel between states and not to have a permanent address. The author even considers moving to Canada. His concerns are exacerbated by constant worrying by his family. If the author were to be deported to the Philippines, there is no guarantee that he would be safe; President Rodrigo Duterte’s “hatred of journalists is just as notorious as Trump’s” (129). Just after he turns 36, the author is invited to Congress by Nancy Pelosi. The lawyers he consults all strongly advise against accepting the offer.

The author does not want to be scared by President Trump’s increased hostility toward immigrants. The author views America as his country, even if he is missing certain paperwork, so he accepts Nancy Pelosi’s invitation. Concurrently with his entrance to the Capitol, he publishes an essay in The Washington Post that explains his appearance at the event. In the article, he explains that he decided to appear because “that’s what immigrants, undocumented and documented, do: We show up” (131). Regardless of the circumstances, he says, such people show up and contribute to American life. Returning to Los Angeles, he moves out of his apartment. He no longer has a permanent address, but he continues to travel. Though he does not know what it is like to be deported, he has learned what it is like to be arrested and detained.

In July 2014, the author sits in a Texas jail cell with 25 boys, their ages ranging from five to twelve. The cement room smells. One boy weeps. None of them make eye contact. Their shoes are muddy and worn down, the laces have been removed. He regrets that he cannot speak Spanish, that he cannot reassure the boys. He wishes he could explain to them “the irreversible actions of the United States of America and the inevitable reactions in their countries of birth” (134); the impact of US foreign policy is one of the largest motivators for immigration. Free trade agreements, interventionist policies, and the expansion of America’s economic and political empire are all tied to the reason why the boys sit in the cold cell. These actions, the author notes, have been carried out by both Democrats and Republicans. The author does not speak Spanish in spite of his Spanish name. He tries to speak to the boys in Tagalog, but the boys simply stare back at him unknowingly.

In order to explain why the author was in the cell with those boys, it is essential, he says, to “unravel a vast enforcement apparatus that is part police force, part frontier cavalry, part deportation machine, and altogether unprecedented in immigration history” (136). This machine, the author says, has its roots in the 1990s and extended its reach in the post-9/11 world. In such a world, immigration was wedded to terrorism by the Bush administration, which created the Department of Homeland Security. In the 1990s, as the author arrived in America, President Clinton launched Operation Gatekeeper to regain control of the country’s borders. Clinton laid the anti-immigration legislative groundwork, helping to criminalize and deport all immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, while also making it more difficult for undocumented immigrants to gain legal status. Such actions trapped immigrants in an inescapable bureaucratic knot that made it harder to stay—or simply exist—in the US. In the time between the Clinton and Obama administrations, the number of immigrants being deported has risen exponentially, from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands per year. This led to Obama being dubbed the Deporter-in-Chief. This has also led to overcrowded prisons and an astronomical rise in detention costs. Billions have been spent patrolling the southern border, but “for what? To protect Americans from whom?” (139)

News coverage in the summer of 2014 epitomizes, for the author, “the moral bankruptcy that characterizes how we talk about immigration in America [in] the twenty-first century” (140). Sensationalized reports about a surge in illegal child immigrants compel the author to travel to the border; the media wonders whether such children are a threat to national security. Together with numerous NGOs, the author will be part of a vigil to welcome child refugees from Central America. While the right-wing are incensed by this surge in refugees (and blamed DACA), the children qualify. President Obama declines to award them refugee status, however. Hilary Clinton says that the children should be sent back to their home countries. The author is worried that his arrival will distract from the plight of the children, many of whom have endured long and arduous journeys. He goes anyway, accompanied by documentarians. Once there, he realizes that he may struggle to leave through the immigration checkpoints set up throughout Southern Texas. Practicing his theory of radical transparency, the author writes an article while determining what to do. It is published the next day, detailing his conundrum. Deciding to leave via an airport, he is stopped by a Border Patrol agent. In a defiant tone, he tells them that he is in the country illegally.

Unsure of what to do with the author, the border patrol agents move him from cell to cell. He is moved from the cell with the boys to an empty cell, then back again. He passes other cells, some containing men, some containing women. Some of the women are pregnant, some cradle babies. An agent reveals to the author that his story is on CNN. From the airport, the author has been taken quickly and placed in a cell. He does not have his phone or any other possessions. His shoelaces have been taken so that he does not hurt himself. There is no bathroom in the cell. Inside, the author has “never felt more naked” (145). There, the author realizes that he has in fact been in a long-term, abusive, toxic relationship. His partner is America and he cannot escape. Locked in the cell, he realizes that the immigration system is not broken. It works exactly as it is intended, punishing those who dare cross the border. He does not know what more America could ask of immigrants.

The author is interviewed by an agent for hours at a time. They talk about how the author arrived in the country and about the differences between Filipino and Mexican Spanish. He talks about being placed on a plane by his mother, about being accompanied into America by a smuggler, and how he grew up to become a journalist. The agent already knows all this information but wants to know more. He talks about wanting to see his name on a byline, about wanting to contribute to society. Eventually, the author asks the agent why he joined Border Patrol. The “benefits are solid” (147), the man replies. Soon, the author is told that he is to be released. He realizes that he has been treated like a novel lab experiment. He asks about a word that one of the young boys said to him and is told that it is Spanish for “fear.”

The author thinks about the parents of the boys locked in the cell, as well as his own mother. He has never really discussed with her the decision to put her son on a plane and send him to another country. He wonders whether it is too hard for him to ask and too painful for her to remember. He is not the only one to lose a family member. His own mother lost her mother (Lola), and the two have hardly spent any time together since. Their relationship (like the author’s own relationship with his mother) has largely been reduced to money sent to the Philippines and American products shipped across the ocean. If his mother had known then how difficult their lives would become, the author wonders, would she have still sent her son away? There is a part of the author, he says, “who is still in that airplane, wondering why Mama put me there” (148).

The author has not always wanted to know why he was released from the Texas jail cell. He does not want to know why he was released after eight hours while others were locked up for much longer and eventually deported. He does not want to know that his friends have called in political favors to inform the Border Patrol that he is Filipino, not Mexican. He does not want to know that he was moved between cells to avoid contact with journalists touring the city. Belatedly, however, he admits that he knew he needed to know. In the process of finishing the book, he calls his mother. They speak more than ever before. When he reveals to her that he has no permanent address, she says “maybe it’s time to come home” (149).