Virginia student graduates from high school, braces for deportation
CHESTERFIELD, Va. — Mother and daughter sat together in their basement apartment last Thursday, deadlocked in the same conversation they had been having for weeks. The daughter’s high school graduation party was scheduled for the next night, but she had yet to hand out a single invitation. The store-bought cards were still wrapped in plastic on the kitchen table next to a box of cap-and-gown-shaped confetti.
“Don’t you want to enjoy this one last thing?” asked Dora Aldana, 40, the mother.
“Why bother?” said Heydi Mejia, 18, the daughter.
Why bother: It had become her answer for so many things during the past five months, ever since immigration officials raided their apartment and her senior year became a countdown to deportation. Why bother celebrating a diploma that would mean nothing in her new life, with friends she might not see again, who wore class T-shirts that read: “Bring on Tomorrow!” and traded tips about decorating their dorm rooms?
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In the election-year debate over immigration reform, the situation Mejia is in has become one of the most debated of all. What should the United States do with illegal immigrants who come to the country as children, grow up here, break no laws and want to remain? In Mejia’s case, what should be done with an illegal immigrant who came to the country at age 4; who speaks better English than Spanish; who wants to attend Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and become a nurse; whose knowledge about modern Guatemala comes in part from what she’s read on Wikipedia?
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Mejia remembers crossing the Rio Grande in the middle of the night, floating next to her mother on a wooden board strung between two tires. A man pulled the makeshift raft as he swam and told Mejia not to worry. The river, he said, was like a long, flat swimming pool.
They were caught by the Border Patrol on the other side and ordered to appear in court, but they didn’t show up on the day of their hearing. The United States filed an order for their deportation — if they could be found — on Sept. 21, 1999.
full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/virginia-student-graduates-from-high-school-braces-for-deportation/2012/06/10/gJQA6o7JTV_singlePage.html
