Borders of Belonging: Struggle and Solidarity in Mixed-Status Immigrant Families

By Heide Castañeda

Borders of Belonging investigates a pressing but previously unexplored aspect of immigration in America—the impact of immigration policies and practices not only on undocumented migrants, but also on their family members, some of whom possess a form of legal status. Heide Castañeda reveals the trauma, distress, and inequalities that occur daily, alongside the stratification of particular family members' access to resources like education, employment, and health care. She also paints a vivid picture of the resilience, resistance, creative responses, and solidarity between parents and children, siblings, and other kin.

Castañeda's innovative ethnography combines fieldwork with individuals and family groups to paint a full picture of the experiences of mixed-status families as they navigate the emotional, social, political, and medical difficulties that inevitably arise when at least one family member lacks legal status. Exposing the extreme conditions in the heavily-regulated U.S./Mexico borderlands, this book presents a portentous vision of how the further encroachment of immigration enforcement would affect millions of mixed-status families throughout the country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Release date: Feb 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781503607927

Book preview

BORDERS OF BELONGING

STRUGGLE AND SOLIDARITY IN MIXED-STATUS IMMIGRANT FAMILIES

HEIDE CASTAÑEDA

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

©2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Castañeda, Heide, author.

Title: Borders of belonging : struggle and solidarity in mixed-status immigrant families / Heide Castañeda.

Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018018752 | ISBN 9781503607217 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503607910 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503607927 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Immigrant families—Texas—Lower Rio Grande Valley. | Immigrants—Family relationships—Texas—Lower Rio Grande Valley. | Illegal aliens—Family relationships—Texas—Lower Rio Grande Valley. | Immigrants—Texas—Lower Rio Grande Valley—Social conditions.

Classification: LCC JV7100 .C37 2019 | DDC 306.85086/912097644—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018752

Typeset by Westchester Publishing Services in 10/14 Minion Pro

Cover design by Rob Ehle

Cover photo: AP Images

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Illegality and the Immigrant Family

1. Belonging in the Borderlands

2. United Yet Divided: Mixed-Status Family Dynamics

3. Little Lies: Disclosure and Relationships Beyond the Family

4. Estamos Encerrados: Im/mobilities in the Borderlands

5. Additional Borders: Education, Work, and Social Mobility

6. Unequal Access: Health and Well-Being

7. Family Separation: Deportation, Removal, and Return

8. Fixing Papers: Status Adjustment in Mixed-Status Families

Conclusion

Notes

References

Index

PREFACE

On an unusually chilly Sunday evening in South Texas, I sat outdoors with family and friends, talking and laughing into the night as the smoky mesquite aroma of backyard barbeques lingered around us. Now and again the unmistakable sound of a Border Patrol helicopter passed in the distance. We were less than a mile from the international border, separated only by the Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area, which began just a few yards from where we were sitting. As the evening wore on and the laughter slowed, some bid farewell to return to their homes on the other side of the river, across the U.S.–Mexico border. As the sound of helicopters faded in and out, my mind wandered as I contemplated families who are at once united and separated. Divided by a political boundary, in the morning they would wake to different realities as sure as the sun peeked through the blinds. People the same, but stratified by borders, passports, visas, legal status.

While I remember a specific chilly evening when the idea for this book was first born, it has always been a work in progress, tapping into my family’s history and my own transnational upbringing. Borders, citizenship, and belonging—and the various physical and social im/mobilities associated with them—shaped my early understanding of the world and, later, the trajectory of my career. Throughout her life, my mother carried with her the joy and pain of leaving her home country, returning, and leaving again. Since birth, I too have been on the move—my first 5,000-mile transatlantic migration was at just four weeks old—and while I grew up primarily in Germany, I was also regularly in South Texas following my parents’ separation. It was in these locations and landscapes that I witnessed the impact of migration and the militarization of borders on family life.

Growing up during the Cold War of the 1980s, we lived not far from the border with East Germany, with many families and communities split apart on either side. Unable to see each other for decades, they were separated by a wall, or, in the region where I lived, a heavily fortified but largely invisible line surrounded by a no-man’s-land of tranquil birch forests. On either side of this dividing line were barbed wire, guard towers, tanks, and nuclear missiles tucked stealthily underground, as signs warned, "Achtung! Zonengrenze" (Warning! Border Zone). The trauma that accompanied the separation of families and entire communities was always present, but was rarely talked about openly.

During the summers, I visited with my father’s side of the family in South Texas, spending time in both San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley. Some of my earliest memories are of scorching late afternoons wandering dry arroyos with him, looking for fossils in the limestone banks. I fell in love with this region—and neighboring Mexico lindo y querido—as a young girl, and was always drawn to the border that divided it. This was a highly visible boundary, physically marked by a river, but while the separation was incredibly palpable, it also seemed nonsensical. Here, the Spanish language dominated, and food, commerce, and politics, it seemed, were always binational affairs. Some of my childhood friends were undocumented, or had parents who were, although I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time.

As an adult, I have continued to travel between these sites, listening to migrants with precarious status. Throughout my own life, and especially during the research described in this book, I have learned to appreciate deeply what migrant parents give up for their children’s futures. They make difficult decisions, and this shapes subsequent generations and their ideas of belonging—about forms of citizenship, but also about their positionality within larger structures of family. At the same time, I remain acutely aware of my own privilege, including the flexible forms of national belonging that are the chance outcome of a specific historical moment and geopolitical circumstance. This book, Borders of Belonging, is an attempt to tell a story that has been a spectral presence in my head and my heart for many years. It seeks to represent the stories of the people I met, to whom I am deeply grateful.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is dedicated to the families in the Rio Grande Valley who shared their stories with me. I feel privileged and humbled to know each of you and wish I could thank you by name, which is not possible for reasons of confidentiality. I hope that I have reflected your experiences in all their complexity, and that this book can contribute in some small way to a better future.

Milena A. Melo was the research assistant for the series of studies upon which this work is based, in addition to being a dear friend. Without her knowledge, perseverance, and thoughtful input, the collection of this data would not have been possible. Thank you for the conversations, insight, and support over the past several years. My fantastic writing partner, Wendy Vogt, was a constant source of camaraderie, keeping me on task and providing critical feedback throughout the process. Thank you, Wendy, for your friendship and support, and the many insightful conversations about migration theory and ethnographic writing along the way. Many others were generous in lending their time and expertise to comment on portions of the manuscript. I thank Elizabeth Aranda, Jill Fleuriet, Helen Marrow, Sarah Smith, and Angela Stuesse for reviewing early drafts of chapters. I am especially grateful to Ryan Logan for his assistance with many elements of this project over the years, especially analysis and manuscript preparation. Several other graduate students at the University of South Florida provided crucial support with project development, transcription, and analysis: James Arango, Nora Brickhouse Arriola, Carla Castillo, Paola Gonzalez, Seiichi Villalona, and Aria Walsh-Felz. In addition, thank you to undergraduate researchers Yessica Chavez Grimaldo and Juliana Leon.

For thoughtful scholarly exchanges about many aspects of this project over the years, I want to thank Sabrina Balgamwalla, Deborah Boehm, Jennifer Burrell, Lauren Carruth, Leo Chavez, Nicholas de Genova, Tara Deubel, Hansjörg Dilger, Whitney Duncan, Karin Friederic, Christina Getrich, Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz, Roberto Gonzales, Margaret Graham, Lauren Heidbrink, Josiah Heyman, Seth Holmes, Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, Sarah Horton, Christine M. Jacobsen, Sharam Khosravi, Nolan Kline, William Lopez, Sarah Luna, Lenore Manderson, Girsea Martinez, James McDonald, Emily Mendenhall, Juan Manuel Mendoza, Nelda Mier, Anne Millard, Jessica Lavariega Monforti, Shanti Morell-Hart, Jessica Mulligan, Faidra Papavasiliou, Brianda Peraza, Anne Pfister, James Quesada, Robin Reineke, Thurka Sangaramoorthy, Adam Schwartz, Jeremy Slack, Carolina Valdivia, Elizabeth Vaquera, Linda Whiteford, Sarah Willen, Kristin Yarris, Rebecca Zarger, and so many others. In addition, the Steering Committee of the Anthropologists Action Network for Immigrants and Refugees (AAINR) has been a positive source of supportive peers and engaged scholars developing concrete actions to lift up the communities with whom we work.

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation (#1535664, jointly through the Law & Social Sciences Program, Cultural Anthropology Program, and Sociology Program), as well as by a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Pilot data collection was made possible by a grant from the University of South Florida Humanities Institute. In addition to this generous assistance, I am fortunate to work with a wonderfully supportive group of colleagues in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida.

In the Rio Grande Valley, I am grateful for the time and support of several organizations over the years, including La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), Nuestra Clinica del Valle, Fuerza del Valle, Access Esperanza, El Milagro Clinic, ARISE, Sacred Heart Refugee Center, MHP Salud, Hope Family Health Center, RGV Focus, Proyecto Azteca, Valley Interfaith, and Children’s Defense Fund. For taking the time for conversations I also appreciate individuals associated with the Hidalgo County Health Department, La Joya Independent School District, Pharr–San Juan–Alamo Independent School District, Teach for America, South Texas College, Texas A&M Colonias Program, and the University of Texas–Rio Grande Valley.

Michelle Lipinski of Stanford University Press shepherded this project to completion with unwavering support and encouragement. Thank you, Michelle, for reading over my manuscript and for all the thoughtful feedback along the way. Thank you also to Nora Spiegel, John Donohue, and the fantastic production staff at the Press. In addition to the scholars named above, I am indebted to the anonymous outside reviewers of this manuscript; I appreciate your thoughtful comments and recommendations, which have greatly strengthened the book. Portions of Chapter 6 have appeared in Castañeda, Heide, and Milena A. Melo. 2014. Health Care Access for Latino Mixed-Status Families: Barriers, Strategies, and Implications for Reform. American Behavioral Scientist 58(14): 1891–1909.

My deepest gratitude is reserved for my family, because of their unwavering love and support. Thank you especially to my mother, Kriemhilde, for inspiring and encouraging me, for always being my champion, and for being genuinely interested in my wild ideas and travels. I am grateful for my exceptional partner and best friend, Valentín, whose companionship makes life beautiful. And to Drake, thank you for understanding my work; I hope you always remain a person with integrity and compassion for others, and speak up and demand justice for those who cannot.

Any royalties that I receive from the sale of this book will be donated to organizations that provide legal support for immigrant families.

INTRODUCTION

ILLEGALITY AND THE IMMIGRANT FAMILY

AFTER MICHELLE MARTINEZ gave birth to a baby girl in a South Texas hospital, she went to the county clerk’s office to pick up the birth certificate, the same way as she had with her first child. But officials told Michelle, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, that the rules had changed. Without specific documents, she would not be able to get the vital record showing that her daughter was a natural-born citizen. When I met Michelle, her daughter was three years old and still had no birth certificate. She said,

I need to get it before they take everything away from her. I don’t have a Social Security number, and I can’t get an ID from here. I have the matrícula consular [identification card issued by the Mexican consulate], but they don’t want to take it like before. With everything that’s going on right now, they can take Mexican parents away, deport them. I’m scared. They want a specific ID I can’t get here. You actually need to go over to Mexico for that. But if I do, I can’t come back.

Like many other mothers, Michelle was asked to present a Mexican driver’s license or national identity card. Since she came to the United States when she was four years old, she had neither. Because she is now undocumented, she can’t travel to Mexico and return; if she did, she would be stopped at the border and refused entry since she no longer has a valid visa. And at the time, consulates in the United States only issued the matrícula consular, which numerous states, municipalities, and businesses across the country accept as an official identification card. The federal government allows it to be used to obtain an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) in order to pay income taxes, many states consider it valid proof of identity for obtaining a driver’s license, and financial institutions accept it for critical activities such as banking. It is a lifeline for the more than 5.6 million undocumented Mexican nationals in the United States. For undocumented parents like Michelle, the matrícula consular is often the only form of identification they can obtain.

Michelle continued, So I asked them, ‘Is there any other way?’ But they didn’t want to help me. I’m like, what do I do? Next year she starts school. She was supposed to start Head Start this year, but she couldn’t because I don’t have the birth certificate.¹ The baby’s father, a U.S. citizen, was not listed on the birth certificate even though he was present at the birth. The hospital staff wouldn’t let him sign the paperwork, since he did not have an ID with him at the time. So, his mom went home and got the ID, Michelle told me. And then he signed everything. He went into the office of the lady that did the paperwork. Gave her the ID and everything. We thought that was done. However, when they tried obtaining the birth certificate, they were told he had still not been listed as the father. She said, It looked like someone had whited out his name. We were shocked! To correct the clerical mistake, the county then asked Michelle to complete an application for child support. She was incredulous: Why am I going to file for child support? We live together. Just because they didn’t list him on the birth certificate? So now we had to go get all these papers signed and notarized again, and wait while they send it up to Houston. Then we have to pay again.

To speed up the process, the clerk suggested that Michelle drive to Houston and visit the main office of the Texas Department of State Health Services in person, where she could obtain the birth certificate the same day. However, to get there, Michelle would have to pass through one of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoints set up between 25 and 100 miles from the international border along all major highways leading to the interior of the United States. Because of these checkpoints, since 2001, Michelle has been unable to leave the region where she resides. She is one of 1.7 million undocumented immigrants living in Texas, many of whom are concentrated within a 100-mile-wide buffer strip along the border that forms a secondary boundary to the interior of the United States.² These checkpoints affect not just recent border crossers but also those who have lived here for decades. Michelle was trapped between two boundaries: she could not return to Mexico to obtain another form of identification for herself, nor could she drive to Houston to expedite the process for her daughter.

In 2015, two dozen parents sued the State of Texas, saying they could not obtain the documents that officials were demanding.³ The lawsuit argued that the state had violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, impacting U.S.-citizen children’s rights by ordering county registrars to no longer recognize as proof of identification their parents’ matrícula consular or foreign passport without a valid visa. The State of Texas, on the other hand, argued that the issuing party (the Mexican consulate) did not routinely verify the documents used to obtain the matrícula. But as the lawsuit stated, By denying the Plaintiff children their birth certificates, Defendants have created a category of second-class citizens, disadvantaged from childhood on with respect to, inter alia, health and educational opportunities. It cited opaque and irregular processes at vital statistics offices—particularly inconsistent in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas—that prevented undocumented parents from being able to present adequate proof of their own identities in order to secure documents for their children.⁴

This example highlights what has been termed bureaucratic disentitlement, which targets marginalized groups, such as the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. Bureaucratic disentitlement is the insidious process by which administrative agencies deprive individuals of their statutory entitlements and infringe on their constitutional rights.⁵ In everyday practice, it takes the form of withholding information, providing misinformation, isolating applicants, and requiring extraordinary amounts of documentation for simple administrative procedures. In doing so, it inhibits the transformation of statutory rights into tangible benefits. This example goes one step further, hinting not only at disentitlement but also at the attempted bureaucratic erasure of an entire generation. These practices highlight the power of rhetoric around anchor babies in the United States today, which frames the U.S.-born children of immigrants as undeserving and suspect citizens, and underscore the ways in which the state can disregard their rights.⁶ Despite widespread misconceptions, U.S.-born children do not anchor families by providing automatic pathways to citizenship to their parents, nor do they provide protection from deportation; instead, mixed-status families remain entrapped in a labyrinth of liminality and precarity.⁷

A year later, I caught up with Michelle again. My first question was: What happened with the birth certificate? I barely got it last week, she told me (see figure 1). On social media, she had found a community of mothers similarly affected by the change in policy. One person had suggested an alternative process, by which a person acting under contract for the registrant could obtain the birth certificate after submitting a particular form. In this way, her boyfriend—acting under contract for the registrant rather than in his rightful capacity as the child’s father—was able to request the birth certificate. Michelle explained,

I went and tried again. She’s starting school, I need her birth certificate! They said no again, that I couldn’t get it. But they also didn’t tell me, Oh, we have this certain form you can fill out. So that’s when I said, Ok, I need that form giving permission for someone else to get it. They were surprised I knew about it. Her dad filled it out, we had it notarized, and that’s how we got the birth certificate. A huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. She’s four years old, and still didn’t have her birth certificate. I wasn’t allowed to enroll her in Head Start. We were going to baptize her, but we couldn’t. And now it’s the last week of registration for elementary school, so just this morning I went to sign her up.

In July 2016, the Texas Department of State Health Services agreed to a settlement that expanded the types of credentials that parents could present, including Mexican voter identification cards—now obtainable at Mexican consulates in the United States—along with a list of additional, newly specified supporting documents more readily available to undocumented persons such as utility bills or paycheck stubs. While Michelle had already found a less-than-ideal alternative solution on her own, other mothers would no longer have to struggle with these inconsistent, arbitrary, and unjust bureaucratic requirements.

Figure 1. Undocumented mother in the Rio Grande Valley who was denied a birth certificate for her U.S.-citizen child. Source: AP Photo/Eric Gay.

Parents like Michelle live in constant fear of having their families torn apart, and without a birth certificate they cannot prove their relationship to their U.S.-born children if stopped by authorities. Undocumented parents struggle with accessing basic education, health, and other services for their families, as all the while the specter of deportability hovers over them. While it comes as little surprise that undocumented persons face such limitations, Michelle’s story shows how U.S.-born citizens are also affected—disenfranchised, even—by a family member’s legal status. At the far end of the spectrum of possibilities, without a birth certificate a child can also become undocumented in the most literal sense of the word, even though they are a U.S. citizen. The refusal to issue birth certificates, as well as inconsistent rules and de facto disentitlement practices of state officials, highlights the precarity of rights even for citizens. A parent’s undocumented status can affect their children from the very start, even if they actively pursue every avenue to protect them, as Michelle did.

This book argues that the construction of illegality for some members in a family influences opportunities and resources for all, including legal residents and U.S. citizens. Like other contemporary studies of the lived effects of law, I use the term illegality to refer to a sociopolitical condition, juridical status, and relationship to the state.⁸ This book follows the experiences of 100 mixed-status families to understand how this illegality impacts the entire family, what it looks like on a day-to-day basis, and how people respond. In order to explore these broad and cumulative ripple effects of undocumented status, the book reframes how we think about contemporary migration by focusing on a social unit—specifically, the family—rather than individuals. Illegality impacts opportunities for everyone, since individuals are always embedded within these complex social units. Mixed-status families have become collateral damage in enforcement efforts and are relegated to a life of indefinite uncertainty.⁹ A better understanding of these effects is needed to help redirect contemporary debates that assume anti-immigrant policies only affect the undocumented.¹⁰ This book illustrates why political efforts toward reform must take into account the experiences of mixed-status families, now a primary and enduring feature of the contemporary immigrant experience in the United States.

While illegality impacts everyone in the family, people are not simply passive recipients of this fate. They mobilize intimate ties to challenge the effects of illegality and deportability.¹¹ Thus this is also a book about the resilience and creative responses of people in mixed-status families, such as Michelle turning to social media for advice and then demanding an alternative form at the county clerk’s office. While life in the United States is made difficult for them, a return to their country of origin is generally out of the question: they have established deep roots in the United States, including strong familial ties, and many would face challenging conditions upon return to a country they no longer know well. This book highlights not only the enduring effects of the condition of illegality but also how people actively strategize and resist juridical categories as part of legal consciousness, in which the law’s meanings are frequently amended and contested as part of everyday experience.¹²

Finally, this book argues that all these experiences are significantly framed by place. This research was conducted in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas (see Map 1), in a county where more than one in ten people are undocumented.¹³ There are a significantly high proportion of mixed-status families like Michelle’s, whose members not only interact with one another but also come into daily contact with bureaucrats, doctors, teachers, law enforcement agents, and others in their community. While their experiences are largely generalizable to mixed-status families in other parts of the United States, they are also framed by the characteristics of a specific place. The borderlands between the United States and Mexico encapsulate a number of contradictions in regards to mobility, ethnonational identity, political participation, economic practices, education, and health care. Communities on both sides of the river have been variously conjoined and split apart through a violent history of multiple conquests and intentional marginalization. Today, the Rio Grande Valley retains a number of geographic and social features that set it apart from adjacent regions, including its ethnic makeup, the dominance of the Spanish language, and a strong binational frame of reference. However, while large numbers cross the border daily for work and recreation, this mobility is only afforded to some segments of the population.

The region is particularly unique in terms of immigration enforcement, as undocumented persons are trapped both in and out of the region, to the south and to the north. Those who are undocumented may be relegated to life within this small strip along the border. Unable to reenter the United States if they cross back into Mexico, they are also unable to travel north to other parts of the state or to other parts of the country, as this requires inspection at one of the fixed Border Patrol checkpoints along the major highways. These checkpoints trap people within a distinct space, while temporary roadblock checkpoints further fuel fear and uncertainty within it. This intensive border enforcement creates what has been referred to as a second river, or a secondary border further impeding mobility into the interior of the United States.¹⁴ This has a range of negative effects, not only on undocumented individuals themselves but also on their citizen family members and communities.

Map 1. Map of the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.

The border region of South Texas is an important site in which to study the lives of mixed-status families as it is one the poorest and most heavily enforced areas in the country, where a high proportion of people are undocumented. It is here that the effects of national policies are experienced more discordantly than in the interior, and thus it is an ideal place to understand the lived effects of law, to challenge conceptualizations about their impact, and to explore terrains often not considered in the design of policy. It is a harbinger site that can offer lessons to the rest of the United States on two issues: (1) the incorporation experiences of a growing demographic—namely, people living in mixed-status families; and (2) the impacts of increased interior immigrant enforcement on communities.

Mixed-Status Families in the United States

Everybody is undocumented in my family, so that’s all I really grew up knowing. Even though I’m a U.S. citizen, I got used to those norms, so in a way it was like I was undocumented myself. This is how Lisa, a twenty-two-year-old college student, explained growing up in a mixed-status family and how it impacted her everyday experiences and outlook on life. We are currently witnessing a demographic shift in the United States. Never before have so many citizen children been affected by the illegality of a family member as in our current historical moment. While immigration has shaped the United States from the nation’s inception, it remains a perennially divisive issue. Both popular and scholarly attention has generally neglected to account for this growing population and the contradictory and perhaps unexpected experiences of families like Michelle’s or Lisa’s.

Attention to mixed-status families is urgently needed, as they now constitute a primary feature of the contemporary immigrant experience. Over the past two decades, the number of families in the United States with complex legal status configurations has sharply increased. Nationwide, at least 16.7 million people are part of mixed-status families, living with at least one undocumented family member in the same household.¹⁵ There are now an estimated 4.6 million mixed-status family households in the United States, which contain varied constellations of citizens, permanent legal residents, undocumented immigrants, and individuals in legal limbo through temporary protected status or deferred action programs.¹⁶ The majority of those in mixed-status families—6.6 million—are U.S. citizens.¹⁷ Most children in these families are U.S. citizens, comprising three-quarters of all children of unauthorized immigrants.¹⁸ These numbers highlight the profound impact of policy on children and youth, regardless of their own citizenship or migration status.¹⁹ These forgotten citizens may not enjoy fully the benefits of citizenship or feel that they belong.²⁰ In addition to intergenerational differences, there are 450,000 foreign-born siblings of citizens, whose experiences have remained largely underinvestigated and unaddressed.²¹

The sharp and measurable increase in mixed-status families over the past two decades is the result of two interrelated exclusionary developments. First, increased border militarization has made it more difficult for people to circulate between the United States and Mexico as they did in the past. For most of the twentieth century, people who migrated to the United States for work returned home for parts of the year or to remain permanently after several years. But, beginning in the 1990s, increased Border Patrol presence and its accompanying technologies—sensors, drones, aerostat radar systems, and coordination with local law enforcement departments—have made this circular movement more difficult. Routes for entering the United States were shut off, redirecting people into deadly desert passages.²² Because of these amplified barriers, many people stopped returning to Mexico and instead opted to either bring relatives over or establish their families in the United States. In addition, a visa backlog has made entering the country legally a daunting, almost impossible, process. Because of the large number of family ties to the United States, there are many more Mexicans waiting for green cards than those from other countries. Obtaining a family-sponsored green card can take up decades for those living in Mexico, a country that is considered oversubscribed because it has exceeded its allocation of visas.²³ At the time of this writing, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service was still processing applications that were submitted twenty-one years ago. With this in mind, it is perhaps no wonder that even those who are eligible for a visa may forfeit the wait and attempt entry in another manner to reunite with family.

A second trend has been the decline in opportunities to regularize one’s legal status. In prior decades, the overall experience of illegality was shorter and affected fewer people. Through the late 1980s, there were a number of mechanisms and easier processes for undocumented people to become legal, including marriage to a citizen, petitioning through a family member, and amnesty programs. By the mid-1990s, however, policy changes greatly restricted the ability to legalize status. These shifts in both immigration and enforcement policy disproportionately impacted Mexican nationals; as a consequence, more than half of Mexican immigrants in the United States are undocumented today.²⁴ As a result of these ever-shifting terrains, mixed-status families represent a complex web of migration histories, legal statuses, and national identities. This complexity means that we must move beyond binaries of documented and undocumented—or authorized and unauthorized—to a spectrum that captures various dimensions of people’s legal ambiguity.²⁵

By examining how the construction of illegality for some members in a family influences opportunities and resources for all, including legal residents and citizens, this book contributes to scholarship on deportability, precarity, and how they relate to constructions of citizenship.²⁶ It illustrates how lives are repeatedly mediated by the condition of illegality, the impact of which can be examined in everyday, embodied experiences, even for those who are lawfully present.²⁷ A myopic focus on individuals in U.S. law and policy to date has grossly neglected historical and geographical factors resulting in mixed-status families. As a result, cumulative effects on families are overlooked. Members are sharply separated on the basis of rights and opportunities, even though they share lives and occupy the same