Coming Home II
November 15, 2016, 8:30 p.m.
Hector Barajas-Varela
Lately I’ve been praying a whole lot, preparing for the interview. Lord, grant me the opportunity to return to my daughter. Friday, I hope to to take the oath for the last time to defend our constitution, my country America. I’ve taken this oath twice when I enlisted & re-enlisted.
My mistakes do not make me un-American, if anything my perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities, these also make me an American.
—Spc B Eighty-Second ABN Paratrooper life deportation from U.S.
U.S Army 95-2001 honorable discharge.
On November 18, 2016, the morning of his citizenship hearing, Hector Barajas-Varela wakes up and stares at the ceiling. He meets with U.S. immigration officials at nine. He has waited a long time for this moment. Too long. He will take a written and oral exam. The oral exam, he knows, will focus on his criminal record. That worries him. How much will his past be held against him? Will they understand he has changed?
The hearing should last about an hour and a half. Barajas-Varela has no idea what might happen. He is sleepy and excited, a bundle of nerves. He has not told his daughter about this day. He does not want to disappoint her if the decision goes against him.
He checks his phone for Facebook messages. He does not really pay attention to the notes wishing him good luck, his mind too cluttered with the civic questions he might be asked:
What happened at the Constitutional Convention?
Why did the colonies fight the British?
What does the Executive Branch do?
The night before on the phone, ACLU attorney Jennifer Pasquarella asked him once again about an alias he used when he crossed illegally into the United States after his first deportation. The alias was Hector Lopez. And what fake documents did you use? Social Security card and green card, he thought. He could not recall exactly. But he’s pretty sure he had to buy a fake green card to work.
“I’d rather go in with the truth so they can’t say I didn’t,” Barajas-Varela told Pasquarella.
“We’ll get through this,” she said.
“I’m dying here,” Barajas-Varela said and laughed a laugh that was desperate and nervous in equal measure. Will a decision about his status be reached the same day as his interview? Will he have to wait? How long? Days, weeks, months? Pasquarella didn’t know.
“Tomorrow, we’ll celebrate or appeal,” she told him. “We’ll kick it to the courts if we have to. It’s not the end of the road.”
“I got to study.”
“You’re ready. Just be your genuine self.”
“That’s the problem sometimes,” Hector said.
He laughed again. That pained laugh; full of worry and of hope.
“It’s down to the wire,” he said to himself as he got off the phone. He turned to a stack of papers and read for the umpteenth time questions he might be asked.
Who was president in World War One?
What does the Judicial Branch do?
He stretched out on the cot. He no longer slept in the bathroom he had converted into a bedroom. Now he was out in the middle of the front office. Bedbugs in some clothing donations he had stored in the bathroom had infiltrated his clothes and a couch. He had to spray everything, he told himself. Later. Now he needed to study. Answer questions about his past truthfully, he reminded himself. So no one can accuse him of being dishonest. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Manual states “an applicant for naturalization must show that he or she has been, and continues to be, a person of good moral character. In general, the applicant must show good moral character during the five-year period immediately preceding his or her application for naturalization and up to the time of the Oath of Allegiance.”
Now, almost 12 hours after he lay on his cot and fell into a fitful sleep, he asks himself whether he has done enough to make up for past mistakes. Can anyone ever really do enough? It depends on who you ask, he supposes. On a Facebook post, he wrote, “personally I am not perfect but I have tried thru all obstacles, personal victories & mistakes to better myself & help others. I am a man of different thoughts, actions, and heart. Whatever they decide it will never change my status of being an all American U.S. veteran, my patriotism.”
If he gets his citizenship, he’ll go home for the weekend and then return to Tijuana. He has a deported veterans Thanksgiving dinner to plan. A mobile health clinic is coming to the Bunker for three days. In the past four months, more than 20 deported veterans contacted him for help. Emails and Facebook messages from guys in Peru, Juarez, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic. You name it. Citizenship or not, he does not see his obligations to these men ending any time soon.
What is freedom of religion?
What is the economic system in the U.S.?
What is the rule of law?
Barajas-Varela gets up. After a shower, he carries his black Army boots to a chair and polishes them. The shine reflects the growing light coming through the glass front door. He sticks his left hand inside each boot to stretch the leather so every crease gets rub downed from the stained rag in his hand. When he finishes, he places the boots on the floor and puts on his Army dress blues. He snaps the brass buttons closed around his chest, slips on his pants and tugs them around his waist. Not as thin as he was when he enlisted. He adjusts a red beret at a slight tilt on his head. He riffles through his briefcase. Passport? Yes. Birth certificate? Yes. Letters of support? Yes. He looks up, stands straight. He stares at himself in a mirror. Airborne all the way, he tells himself.
On a bus minutes later, he wipes perspiration from his forehead.
Name two rights everyone has in the United States.
He gets off the bus near la frontera, the border. People carrying bags and suitcases walk up ramps and through doors that will lead them into the United States. Vendors hawk piñatas and boys pushing carts of burritos and tacos call out to passersby. A deported Afghanistan War veteran with post-traumatic stress calls to Barajas-Varela. They hug. The vet wishes Barajas-Varela luck.
A deported, Vietnam War veteran leans on a cane approaches Barajas-Varela. They shake hands. More deported vets converge around Barajas-Varela, Marines and Army men, most of them with drug convictions, and he smiles and embraces each one.
“Thank you, Hector.”
“Good luck, man.”
“You’ll be eating lunch at KFC soon.”
Customers outside a nearby pharmacy stop and stare at the small gathering. Even at this early hour, a traffic jam exists at the border, and drivers waiting to enter the United States look out their windows at the man in the American Army uniform and the men gathered around him. Barajas-Varela tries to speak. His voice catches.
“Whatever happens, nothing will change in my heart,” he says, the words breaking with his tears. “I love my family. I love my country. I love you guys. I will keep working to get you home. Airborne all the way!”
Barajas-Varela embraces all of them one more time and then walks toward the border. The veterans follow him.
“I hope he makes it,” one says. “If they give it to him, it will change things for a lot of us.”
The veterans watch Barajas-Varela pass through a gate flanked by two security guards. He takes a ramp to a border patrol office. Before he steps inside, he ponders the glinting skyline of San Diego. The sun shines. A bright blue day filled with a mix of uncertainty and possibility. Barajas-Varela opens the door. He does not look back.