The choice of a mother: jail in Los Angeles or deportation to Mexico with their children


Modesta Matías Aquino was working on her regular morning shift, from 3 am to noon, on the farm of Glass House in Camarillo, taking care of rows of marijuana plants.

Among his co -workers in the morning of July 10 were two of his daughters, 16 and 19.

“With everything that happens, with the raids, there were rumors that something bad could happen,” Matías recalled.

Around 9 in the morning, he said, Falanges of masked agents in tactical vests sealed of the extensive complex. Matías and his daughters were among more than 300 undocumented immigrants, including at least 10 minors, who, according to US authorities, were arrested in a couple of glass house sites.

The raids, like other similar operations in the United States, divided many calls “mixed state”, those with both citizens born in the United States, often children, and undocumented relatives, typically one or both parents.

Matías' family life is, for any definition, complicated, including seven daughters in all. His two youngest daughters, aged 2 and 5, are American citizens, born in California. His 2 -year -old grandson, Matías' 16 -year -old daughter's son, is also a native of California. Then, when Matías was held in a federal confinement in downtown Los Angeles, he faced a transcendental choice, one that would mark his family for life.

Matías, 43, could accept the extraction of Mexico. But that could effectively banish her to return to the United States, where she had worked as a field worker for most of the last quarter of a century, and where she had deep family ties.

Alternatively, she could fight expulsion in court. But that would leave her in custody, possibly indefinitely.

“They told me that I could be locked up for months, maybe a year, and never see my children,” said Matías, remembering what US agents informed him in Los Angeles. “I could simply bear that.”

Instead, Matías said, he agreed to voluntarily return to Mexico, but with a warning: he had to be accompanied by his two youngest daughters and his grandson. After some regatines, the federal authorities were initially considered by sending lower US citizens to Mexico, Matías said, an agreement was reached. (The National Security Department did not respond to the consultations of the times).

She and four daughters, the two undocumented teenagers who worked in Glass House and the two young American citizens, were soon in a truck on the way to Tijuana. The grandson born in the United States was also with them.

“Go ahead,” an agent told Matías about letting the family out on the border. “You are back in your country now.”

Ailed Lorenzo Matías and his son, Liam Yair, in the family home in Miahuatlán de Porfirio Díaz, have a video chat with the child's father, who is in California.

(Liliana Nieto del Río / For the Times)

Back to Yojuela

The yojuela village is home to about 500 people, all the origins of indigenous Zapotec, which reside in the state of Sierra Madre Oriental, in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. The area is known for its clay ceramics, triggered from the distinctive reddish land and for something else, sending its offspring to work in the California fields, supporting loved ones that remain in a rite of step tested in time.

The script sequel is the triumphant return of those who went ahead but never left their roots. These days, however, many return to places like Yojuela broke and bitter, victims of the deportation attack of President Trump.

Matías and his family appeared last month, only 20 days after he was arrested. She had last put on foot here seven years before.

“This is where I was born and raised,” Matías said with renunciation and pride, dedicating visitors to a green patch that shone after recent rains.

Reaching the ancestral home implies a trip up up of two hours on a laundry road from the nearest city, and then a brief walk, through a steep current and hill, past corn and beans fields and pine stalls, all to a twrowding soundtrack and mocking.

Matías accompanying were two daughters born in the United States, Arisbeth, 2, and Keilani, an Oxnard preschool that turned 5 in Tijuana. The 16 -year -old daughter of Matías, Ailed, and the son born in the United States of Ailil, Liam Yair, 2 years old, were also present.

I would like to return to California

– Lorenzo Matías

He marked the first time that the Native Californians met their extended family, including a squad of curious cousins.

Seasoned to the periodic meeting ritual was Cecilia Aquino, mother of Matías and her five brothers, all of which had made the walk to California. For decades, his Housing from Adobe received waves from grandchildren and great -grandchildren while his sons and daughters were from one place to another, trusting in pups to the matriarch.

Matías and his mother, now 72, hugged, words are not needed. Each examined the other close. Time had had its melancholic cost.

“All my children had to leave and leave their children with me, there is no job here,” said Aquino, used for years of work, while preparing coffee in a ignition stove. “Then they return. Then they leave again. It's sad. Children never know their parents. I want the officials on the other side [of the border] I would let them be together. “

Leaving home

Matías joined the migrant path when he was a teenager, after the crops (strawberries, celery, broccoli and more) from California to the northwest of the Pacific. Through the years, he gave birth to his seven daughters, four in the United States, three in Mexico, while crossing the border a dozen times.

“I was always a single mother, always fighting for my children,” Matías said. “I won everything through my own sweat and work. My children's parents never gave me anything.”

His last trip to the north, in 2018, was the most difficult, since the international limit once porous had become a militarized bulwark. She promised that it would be her last crossing. Four years ago, he said, he said the work at Glass House Farms, an important player in the legalized boom in cannabis.

“It was the best job I've had,” he said.

There was no crouched: the trimmers sat in banks. The sun was not a problem in temperature controlled facilities.

Matías said he got up to become a crew manager, supervising 240 workers. She said she earned more than $ 20 per hour and, with overtime, regularly collected for more than $ 1,000 per week, an unfathomable route in Oaxaca, where the field of the hands is backed by the equivalent of approximately $ 10 per day.

His plan, he said, was to stay in California until he turned 65, then retired to Yojuela, using savings to open a store.

“I never wanted to stay forever in Oxnard,” he said.

Then arrived on July 10.

'Total chaos'

“People ran everywhere,” Matías de la Rodada recalled. “Some tried to hide inside the greenhouses. Others crawled into the ventilation axes. It was total chaos.”

A worker, Jaime Alanis García, 56, died from the wounds suffered when he fell from a greenhouse roof, apparently while trying to evade the arrest.

Blocking any escape for her and her two daughters, said Matías, were The military – American agents strongly armed in the martial outfit.

That night, said Matías, spent an insomnia night stopped in downtown Los Angeles. The next day, she accepted a “voluntary return” to Mexico.

For almost a week, the family stayed in a shelter in Tijuana, waiting for the arrival of his male partner and the boyfriend of his 19 -year -old daughter. Both were also among the detainees of the glass house. The three -day bus trip to the south included a change of fierce crossown terminals in Mexico City at midnight to catch the last coach for Oaxaca.

With her remaining savings, Matías bought an unfinished and ash house on the outskirts of Miahuatlán de Porfirio Díaz, a historic but monotonous city that houses a federal prison. It is a two -hour trip on a difficult track of Yojuela, but offers base school and labor perspectives.

The expulsion to Mexico destroyed a family that had reached a minimum, perhaps an illusion, of stability in California.

A 5 -year -old girl sits on the ground with old bowns and pitchers

Keilani Lorenzo Matías, 5, a daughter born in the United States of Modesta Matías Aquino, in the new home of the family in Miahuatlán de Porfirio Díaz.

(Liliana Nieto del Río/Liliana Nieto del Río/For The Times)

Like his mother, Ailed Lorenzo Matías, 16, succumbed to the call of Sirena de la Frontera. She was 14 when she and her boyfriend crossed California. She fought to climb the fence and descend on the side of the United States, worrying about her baby. I was five months pregnant.

The other day, Ailil sat on a staircase in the new house in Miahuatlán, hugging his son. They were sharing a video call to Oxnard with the child's father, who also worked at Glass House. But, in a destination turn, I was out of service on July 10.

“I would like to return to California,” said the soft voice Ailil. “My son was born there. And that's where his dad is.”

Unlike Ailed, his sister, Natalia Lorenzo Matías, 19, has no intention of returning.

“No, I don't want to go back,” Natalia said. “You don't have a real life there. You spend your time working and locked in your home, always fear of being arrested.”

His mother is deeply tormented but strives to hide his despair. “I have to be strong for children,” Matías said. “When I'm alone, I start crying.”

She says that she understands Trump's point: he wants to deport criminals. But, ask, why aim at workers' immigrants?

“In all my years in the north,” he said, “I never saw an American working in the fields.”

His plan, he says, is to stabilize the family, register his 5 -year -old girl at school, find some work and, then, perhaps in a year or two, left once more.

For now, however, Matías says he concentrates on helping his family adapt to a new way of life, although he expects, a transient, until they return to the road to California.

The special correspondents Cecilia Sánchez Vidal and Liliana Nieto del Río contributed.

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