Facing the threat of deportation
By Adam Foxman
March 19, 2006 9:00 p.m.
Mario Escobar’s boisterous laughter dies out as he tells
his story. As other students focus on their final exams this week,
he also has to cope with the possibility of being deported to a
violent country. “It’s crazy; it’s a hell,”
said Escobar, a fourth-year English and Spanish student. Escobar is
one of dozens of UCLA students who are undocumented, meaning that
they do not have the papers necessary to be legal residents of the
United States. While there is no official count of such students,
an on-campus support group for undocumented students has nearly 60
members. Like many undocumented students, Escobar came to the
United States at an early age: He fled to the United States from El
Salvador after that country’s civil war, which lasted from
1979 to 1992. His father, grandmother and cousins were killed in
the conflict. Escobar has applied for political asylum, but he has
already been denied once, he said. The denial came nearly a year
ago. His second hearing with the immigration court is scheduled for
March 28, and if this petition is rejected, he could be deported to
El Salvador. The prospect of deportation fills him with frustration
and fear. And while otherwise confident and articulate in
conversation, Escobar lapses into heavy silence at the mention of
his case. “I refuse to think about it because if I do, then I
know it will bring me down,” he said. Escobar, 28, has spent
much of his life in the United States. In addition to working his
way to within a year of finishing a double major at UCLA, he has
started a family; founded a fledgling publishing company called
Cuzcatlan Press; published a volume of original poetry in Spanish
called “Gritos Interiores” (“Cries from
Within”); and started a literary magazine to give a voice to
what he calls the Central American diaspora. He published his book
in 2005, and the first issue of the magazine, called “La
Nueva Tendencia” (“The New Tendency”), should be
in stores by April. As his court date approaches and he faces the
possibility of being thrown out of his adopted country, Escobar
said he feels dislocated and trapped. “I feel like an
outcast, I feel marginalized,” he said. He is also frightened
by the prospect of returning to El Salvador, because more than a
decade after the end of that county’s civil war, it remains a
violent place. In a 1999 report done for the World Bank, Amnesty
International found that more than 100 people out of every 100,000
are killed in homicides each year in El Salvador. And in 1998, more
than 200 in 100,000 Salvadorian men ages 15-34 were killed in
homicides. By comparison, California had 6.8 murders per 100,000
residents in 2003, according to the New York Times Almanac for
2006. Escobar’s situation is uncommon at UCLA, but it
resonates with many immigration issues being discussed on a
national level. Lawmakers working on a major immigration bill,
which is currently in the Senate Judiciary Committee, are grappling
with questions of how to cope with the millions of illegal
immigrants currently in the United States and what to do with
future newcomers. Questions of residency are also highly charged at
California’s public universities, where some undocumented
students pay in-state tuition as a result of AB 540, a California
state law that allows students who have attended a California high
school for three or more years to pay resident tuition. Though some
undocumented students qualify to pay in-state tuition under AB 540,
they cannot receive federal or state financial aid under current
California law. Still, the law has led some to argue that
undocumented students are taking resources which should go to U.S.
citizens. A class-action lawsuit filed in December against
California public colleges and universities charged that by
allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition, the
universities were discriminating against U.S. citizens. If the
lawsuit succeeds, AB 540 could be repealed.
One story among many While the particulars of Escobar’s
case are unique, his experience as an undocumented student is
common, said Roberto MancÃa, a professor of literature at Los
Angeles Trade Technical College. “By telling Mario’s
story, (one is) telling the story of thousands of other
students,” said MancÃa, who became friends with Escobar
when Escobar was studying at LATTC. As Salvadorians, Escobar and
MancÃa bonded over their common experiences. Like several of
Escobar’s other friends, MancÃa described him as gifted
and inspirational. But MancÃa said the uncertainty of being
without immigration papers weighs on his young friend as it does on
many undocumented students. It’s like “a cloud that
won’t go away; a sense of hopelessness,” MancÃa
said. But Escobar and UCLA’s other undocumented students have
something MancÃa said is unique in his experience: a support
group. The student-run group, called Ideas UCLA, seeks to provide a
safe environment for students to talk about a subject often taboo
even among friends and family ““ their immigration status. The
group has about 30 active members, and another 30 on its mailing
list, said Saray Gonzalez, the group’s co-chairwoman. Ideas
UCLA’s work to educate high school students about AB 540 is
funded by the Community Activities Committee, which oversees
funding for off-campus projects. Most, but not all, of Ideas’
members are undocumented. Most are also Latino, but the group has a
member each from Poland, Vietnam and Russia. The term undocumented
is used generally. For example, some undocumented students may have
work permits but not legal residency, or may be in the process of
becoming naturalized. Members help each other with everything from
school to transportation, work with UCLA staff members who can
advise them about subjects such as scholarships, and work to inform
undocumented high school students about the opportunities available
to them. Students in the group rarely face deportation, but at
least one group member other than Escobar has faced deportment
proceedings, said Gonzalez, a fourth-year chemistry student. The
student who faced deportation, now an alumnus, was ultimately able
to stay in the United States. Though few UCLA students have faced
deportation, the slim possibility that someone might place a call
to immigration authorities encourages many undocumented students to
hide their status, Gonzalez said. But the top concerns cited by
members of Ideas UCLA included the negative perception of
undocumented individuals and financial difficulties. “Being
undocumented is highly stigmatizing,” Gonzalez said. When
Ideas UCLA was founded in 2003, it gave form to a community many
undocumented students didn’t know they had. “Now that
Ideas exists it actually makes people more comfortable doing a lot
of things. It gives people a place to talk about their stories and
know they are not alone,” said Tam Tran a fourth-year
American literature and culture student who is a member of the
group. MancÃa, who often encounters undocumented students at
LATTC, said the information Escobar gave him about the club has
been a boon to his students. “Knowing that other students are
in a similar situation makes them aware that anything is possible.
It makes an incredible difference,” he said.
Waiting for resolution For all the similarities and differences
Escobar’s story bears toward those of other undocumented
students, as he studies for finals this quarter he is also just a
man who wants to know what will happen to him. “The war (in
El Salvador) ended in 1992, and still being in this situation,
I’m tired. I want this nightmare to be over. I want to know
what it feels like to be a citizen of a country,” he said. As
he waits for his deportation hearing, the literature student and
author takes solace in writing. Books have always been both an
escape and a tool to deal with the past, he said. “Literature
has been, as we say in Spanish, “la guarida” ““ a
safe place. … There, I can create my own world,” Escobar
said. Alicia Gaspar de Alba, a UCLA Chicana/o studies professor,
once told Escobar that by writing he could gain authorship over his
own life, and he believes he has. Within the 115 pages of his book
“Gritos Interiores,” Escobar includes poems that he
wrote as long ago as 1992, and as recently as last year. One of his
early poems recalls the layered Russian doll, called a matrioska,
he carried as a child, wishing he could hide inside it like one of
the interior dolls as the sounds of war burst into his home in El
Salvador. Roughly translated from the Spanish in which it was
written, the poem reads: “I walked, I walked, I walked, and
at last I found you matrioska / Open your body and let me hide
inside you.” In a more recent poem, Escobar described his
feeling of desperation. Seated against a pillar outside Rolfe Hall
on Friday, he translated it: “I have walked through the
desert, burned, mutilated, and dead / I walk like a shadow, hungry
for an eternal / smile / Giving a neglected cry / and rowing
against the / breeze.” MancÃa said in the nearly five
years he has known Escobar, the poet has progressed from an
imitator of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda to an author with a powerful
voice of his own. And now, as he faces the possibility of
deportation, Escobar is working to put out “La Nueva
Tendencia” to give other Central American writers a place to
tell their stories. “In a way Mario has been saying what I
have wanted to say for a long time,” MancÃa said.
“That we (Central Americans) have a voice.”
