A family separated and their education derailed

Transcript:

Anne Vasquez:

Welcome to Education Beat. I’m Anne Vasquez, executive director at EdSource. US immigration policy has long ebbed and flowed, depending on who was in office. The changes in regulations over the last four years have been so sweeping, the impact on California’s families and children will be felt for years to come. For students the consequences can be devastating. About one in eight of California school children have an undocumented parent. Living with the fear of having a parent deported can make balancing school and home a real challenge. Some have to make difficult choices, go to college or help the family put food on the table. This week, we take a look at how the college plans of three siblings, all of them US citizens, were derailed in order to help at home. The patriarch of the family took steps to obtain a green card only to be separated from his loved ones for more than two years. The story of this Central Valley family reflects in real human terms how immigration policy has a direct impact on the education of US-born children. Here is this week’s Education Beat with host Zaidee Stavely.

Zaidee:

On a Saturday afternoon at the Ruiz house, the grill is sizzling with carne asada. Armanda Ruiz and her four kids are sitting down to eat. The five of them laugh and tease each other about who likes their meat most burned. This family is tightknit. But to the kids, it feels like there’s a hole in the home. A dad-shaped hole.

 

Nathan:

For us, there’s like this space where he used to be, but he’s not there anymore. And like, every time you come home, you’re just like, ‘Oh, I feel like something’s missing.’

 

Zaidee:

That’s 19-year-old Nathan. The ‘something’ missing is his stepdad, José Luis Ruiz Arévalos.  He’s been stuck in Mexico for the past two years since he went back to apply for his green card. There are reminders of him everywhere in the cozy trailer: the family photos along the hallway, the triple bunk bed he built so three kids could share a room. José has helped raise Nathan and his brother Ignacio and sister Elena since they were little. And eleven years ago, he and their mom Armanda had another daughter together – their little sister Priscila.

 

Nathan:

We all love him as an actual father, because he basically raised us. He’s my papa. So it was very tough. We haven’t even seen him for a long time. We only video chat with him.

 

FAMILY VIDEO CALL AMBI: Ringing… Papi!!! Como estas? Bien. Eso…

The video calls keep this family close, even though José is in Hermosillo, Sonora, a thousand miles away. Priscila shows her dad a drawing she did of a tiger.

Tu lo hiciste bebe? Ella lo pintó solita…

Sometimes 17-year-old Ignacio asks him how to unclog the toilet or how to change the oil in the car. The oldest, Elena, keeps him updated on her job. Squished between her kids on the couch, is their mom Armanda, who keeps the whole family together.

Chatter and laughter.

Zaidee :

Armanda’s a U.S. citizen. When she married José, she wanted to apply for a green card for her husband. But it’s not that easy. Jose had been living here without papers since his parents brought him from Mexico as a teenager — 30 years ago. Under current immigration law, if you crossed the border without papers, you have to leave the country to apply for a green card. And you can be banned from coming back for 10 years. Even if you’re married to a U.S. citizen.There is one way around that ban: if you can prove your absence would cause “extreme hardship” for your U.S. citizen spouse or parent. In Armanda’s case, the hardship was clear.

Armanda:

Yo no tenía ingresos. … por tener dos hijas deshabilitadas, una con problemas de salud mental y la otra por su nacimiento prematuro. …

Zaidee :

She explains she can’t work because she has a full-time job caring for two children with disabilities. Nathan has struggled with severe depression. Priscila was born prematurely with major medical problems.

Armanda:

Pasariamos sufrimiento tremendo si el no esta ayudandonos en la economia del hogar.

Zaidee:

Without Jose and his income, they would really suffer.

Zaidee :

The government approved the waiver. And the couple thought they had all their paperwork in order. José didn’t make much money as a handyman, so they followed the rules and found a sponsor – a family friend, who made more, and signed papers saying he would support them if needed.

In May of 2019, Jose left for Mexico expecting to return with a green card.

What he didn’t know is that the Trump administration had recently moved to make it a lot tougher for low-income immigrants to become legal residents — expanding something called the public charge rule. That’s an old rule meant to exclude people if they’re likely to be completely dependent on government aid. But under Trump, it swept up a lot more people.

Quinn:

And so we began hearing anecdotes of denials in a space where we had never seen denials before, over issues that had never cropped up before in the public charge space.

Zaidee :

That’s Erin Quinn. She’s senior staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco. She says it happened to a lot of people… out of the blue. It seemed officials were looking for reasons to deny people like Jose. At the consulate, officers started asking questions they had never asked before.

Quinn: Well, I want you to prove up that you actually know the person that signed your sponsorship. I want you to show me that your sponsor can pay. I want to know what benefits your family members are using in the United States.

Zaidee :

Jose never used any public benefits. But his kids, all US citizens, did get some help from the government. Because Priscila, the youngest, has disabilities, she gets Supplemental Security Income. The others  had gotten food stamps and Medi-Cal. Before President Trump changed the public charge rule, those things wouldn’t have counted against Jose. And having a sponsor like Jose’s friend, would have been enough proof he wouldn’t become a burden on the government. But not anymore. The consulate officers told José he would need another sponsor. And instead of waiting for him to turn in the new paperwork, they cancelled the waiver that would let him return home to California. José felt that his world had broken into a million pieces.

Jose:

Para que mejor me entienda, nunca he estado en la cárcel, pero me imagino que asi ha de ser la carcel.

Zaidee:

I’ve never been in jail, says José, but I think it must feel like this. He spoke to me over zoom from Sonora.

Jose:

Que le quitan a uno todo. Desde familia. Desde. Su personalidad. Todo se lo quitan a uno.

Zaidee:

They take everything from you, he says. Your family. Your personality. Everything.

Zaidee :

Before the Trump changes to the public charge rule, barely 3,000 people a year were denied entry because officials doubted they would be able to support themselves. After the changes, that number grew exponentially. In 2019, the year José got stuck in Mexico, – a record 21,000 people were denied – seven times as many as before.

President Biden has since reversed the Trump policy. And José and Armanda are applying again for another waiver to see if he can come home to his family. But they’re still separated. What hurts José most is watching his kids’ plans for college unravel.

Jose:

Y lo más feo que siento, pues que le echan ganas a los estudios ellos. Y les estoy cortando las alas. [fade under] Les… Me siento que le estoy cortando las alas.

Zaidee :

My kids really put their heart into their studies, he says. I feel like I am clipping their wings.

With Jose unable to come home, the family was left without any income. Elena, the oldest, went to work… and dropped out of UC Merced. She’s the first in her family to ever go to college.  She was afraid if she dropped out, she might never go back, but she didn’t know what else to do.

Elena:

So counselors usually advised me to, like, try to stay in school, but they didn’t really understand that I was the only one that was able to work.

Zaidee :

Elena applied for dozens of jobs. She worked at a tomato-packing plant, at Big 5 Sporting Goods as a cashier, and last year with the U.S. Census Bureau. But she needed a job with stable benefits. So she decided to join the Army Reserve. She thought if she could support the family, her younger siblings could follow their dreams.

Elena:

Well because I’m the oldest,  … I’m like the forefront. So I don’t want them to like, get pressured too, I’d rather just like take off some of the pressure. So when they go to school, they don’t have to worry about it.

Zaidee :

But Elena’s brothers are considering putting off their dreams. Nathan took a job at the tomato plant and enrolled in community college part-time. Ignacio is a high school senior. Last year he had a 4.6 grade point average — all A’s, including in four Advanced Placement classes. He recently got a letter from Harvard, encouraging him to apply. But with his dad gone, he’s not sure he can leave his family behind.

Ignacio:

I thought about college but what I’m really thinking about is a vocational education so I can get a degree and also an internship. Yeah. I don’t want to go out of state so I can have close proximity to my family.

Zaidee:

José has been gone now for more than two years. The family still doesn’t know when he might be able to return. And the years of separation can’t be undone. Elena wants to take classes again when she returns from basic training. She hopes she’ll one day get her degree. But right now, she says, it’s not the right time.

Elen:

I think my dream would just be my family to be together. We try our hardest. We have to just keep hoping.

Zaidee :

In June, Armanda and the kids drove to visit José in Mexico. It was a rare chance for the family to be together before Elena headed to basic training. They went to the beach — a first for some of the kids — and waded into the ocean, playing in the waves. From the sand, Armanda watched and took a video with her phone. In it, her husband and her children walk toward the horizon. They jump over wave after wave coming at them. All together. For the moment.

Zaidee:

This is Education Beat, getting to the heart of California schools. I’m Zaidee Stavely. I met the Ruiz family while working on an EdSource project where we followed several families over the course of last school year while they did distance learning. As soon as they told me their immigration story, I knew it was powerful, not only because of how it affected them, but because there are so many others that are in similar situations in California and across the country. I asked Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez to join me to talk about this broader issue. She’s deputy director of Californians Together, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving education for English learners. Xilonin developed a project called support for immigrant and refugee students with resources for educators to foster a safe and inclusive learning environment for students from immigrant families. She says the Ruiz family is very representative of many California families.

Xilonin:

Often we have families that are mixed status, right? So often the children are actually citizens, but maybe are living with a family member, a parent who may not have regular status. And so we end up seeing the impacts of immigration policies that are really destructive to our families. Impacting many more people than most of us just imagine. Looking at most recent data, one in five children in California live in a mixed status family. It’s not necessarily the parent, it’s just in the family. So it could be like an extended family member.

Zaidee:

What other ways in addition to, you know… this public charge policy affected this family, but what other immigration policies affect kids and how does it affect them in school?

Xilonin:

The biggest one is really around access to status towards some kind of documentation. There are very few paths for people who are in this country that do not have documented status to be able to do that. The example you shared is very common, right? People may end up being told they have to go back to their country. And then the reality is they have to wait at least 10 years to even reapply. That’s really the biggest barrier. But I think there are other factors in terms of just people accessing resources. So like I said, many of these families actually have citizen children, but they’re fearful to access resources, even though their families are due those resources based on our current legal system, like healthcare access, access to Cal fresh. Even though there’s plenty of communication out there about how that policy has gone away on public charge, things have changed, families still have that intense fear about what happens if I do the wrong thing,

Zaidee:

I asked Xilonin what schools and teachers can do to support immigrant families. She said there are basically three levels. The district, the school, and in the classroom. At the district level, it’s about developing policies around what information you can ask for from families during admissions, for example, and what information you will or will not share with immigration officials. Some districts have created special welcoming centers to help immigrant families with admissions and also connect them to outside resources. At the school level one example is inviting groups in to do presentations to families on legal rights or other resources. Xilonin is on the school board in Azusa Unified School District in LA.

Xilonin:

So in my district, instead of thinking about like, how do we sort of like deliver like one off, share information, like I have a big meeting and say, oh, come in and learn about DACA, right? Or come in and learn about public status. What we really learned is the best way to do that is sort of to integrate it into our communications. So often a family will be fearful to come to one of those events cause they’re like, oh, I don’t wanna go to that. ICE is gonna see that’s happening and then they’re gonna show up. But if you just make sure that it’s within all the regular communication, it really helps.

Zaidee:

Xilonin says the classroom is another important place to offer support to students from immigrant families. At Californians Together, they PR partnered with the Center for Equity For English learners at Loyola, Marymount University and developed curriculum for kindergarten through high school. One piece focused on books to spark conversation about family separation and detention. It seems like a really big, heavy topic to talk about with little kids, but Xilonin says it’s important.

Xilonin:

Cause we think about like how do we talk about family separation with kindergartners in schools? We used a book called from north to south where the mother ends up being deported and being on the other side. I was able to visit a school district Mountain View and talk and see it in action. They actually used it with their parents and kids like after school as an engagement approach. And the teacher, she asked a question about like, do you know what it means to be without papers? And then a little kid raised their hand and said, yes, it means that we can’t go to Mexico for Christmas. And so I use that example because we think that kids don’t understand right. And we think, oh, we can’t talk about it, but we really need to talk about what they experience because they really do experience it and being able to bring it into the classroom and being able to maybe talk about a third person that’s being affected by a very similar issue helps kids understand that. So I think that’s a good example. I also helps to build empathy.

Zaidee:

So in the Ruiz family, it’s mostly affected the kids for going to college. So is there anything that high schools can or should be doing to help students that might be in this situation where they’re really in a situation where they may have to put off their college education because of this?

Xilonin:

Yeah, I believe in the power of peer support, right. There are really strong peer supports at community colleges for undocumented students. And it’s something that high school should be looking at in terms of how do we build those supports for those students, to understand the opportunities and understand that maybe there is a way to be able to go to college and make sure that your family is safe and supported. I think often those that have done it are the best messengers to be able to talk about that.

Zaidee:

And that might be true also for students, like these kids who are citizens themselves, but who are in a situation where they’re separated from their dad and need to help the family.

Xilonin:

Yeah. The example I used was around undocumented status, but like I said, most of these families they’re cohesive units. And so very similar impacts. Right.

Zaidee:

Xilonin is there anything else you’d like to add?

Xilonin:

Yes. One thing I’d like to add, and that is, I think that a lot of people had heightened awareness of how do we support immigrant students during the last presidential administration, just because of all the negative rhetoric. But the reality is the needs of these students existed before then. They exist now. So it’s so important that we as schools and school communities understand that those need to be focused on and continue to be focused on. And that’s really the point of our educational system is to support the needs of each student where they are.

Zaidee:

Thank you so much for talking with me Xilonin. I really appreciate it.

Xilonin:

You’re welcome.

Xilonin:

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of Education Beat, getting to the heart of California schools, a production of EdSource. Our producer is Coby McDonald. The audio story in this episode was produced in collaboration with the California Report Magazine at KQED. Special thanks to Tyche Hendrix, Sasha Khokha, Brendan Willard, Amanda Font, and the whole team. Jennifer Molina contributed to the reporting this week. Thanks to Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez, Denise Zapata and our director Ann Vasquez. And extra special thanks this week to Armanda Ruiz and Jose Luis Ruis-Aravalos and their kids, Elena, Nathan, Ignacio, and Priscilla for opening their hearts and their home and sharing their story with us. Our theme music is from Blue Dot Sessions. This episode was brought to you by the Sobrato Family Foundation. I’m Zaidee Stavely. Join me next week and don’t forget to subscribe.