The Heaviest, Lightest Thing

Updated at 5:50 p.m. ET on July 6, 2021

The last time a Democrat lived in the White House, I was nearly detained outside of its gates. It should have been obvious to me, an undocumented immigrant, that giving my blank passport to a Secret Service agent could get me in trouble.

But I, along with a classmate, had been asked to be there for a meeting about college access hosted by first lady Michelle Obama’s higher-education initiative, and my security form had cleared the night before. And this was America, where immigrants supposedly could do such things as become senators and secretaries of state, and get invited to meetings at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, within the White House complex.

Predictably, the Secret Service agent told me that I was not on the list and that I should reach out to my “point of contact” inside. “I’ll catch up with you,” I told my friend, knowing that I wouldn’t. After about an hour of waiting, one of the hosts appeared, and told me that he was so sorry and that he would call me later. “You didn’t tell me you were undocumented!” he said, stunned, over the phone.

I took my burgundy Venezuelan passport and walked away, breathing in the peculiar blend of hope for Hillary Clinton and trepidation about Donald Trump that already filled the D.C. air in March 2016. The Secret Service that protected the man who lived in the White House—who often used his ancestors’ immigrant stories to wax poetic about this country—could have just as easily sent me to detention that day.

The current White House occupant also claims to be on immigrants’ side, decrying in his inaugural address the “racism, nativism, fear, and demonization” that have “long torn us apart.” The presidency of Joe Biden has brought, as promised, a clean break from some of Trump’s pernicious policies, such as the travel ban and the assault on the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. On his first day in office, Biden sent an immigration bill to Congress