One Family's Reverse Migration Story

0:00That's pure automotive joy. I'm Peter, the owner of Muscle Car Junior. It started as a hobby, then I started posting about it. Before I knew it, I built a business for storing muscle cars on Facebook Marketplace, and the community of car lovers on Instagram. Today, new customers send me what's that message is from all over. Not bad for a hobby. But how meta helps over 35 million American businesses, like Peter's Grow, at meta.com slash community. It's the Brine Lair Show on WNYC, I'm producer Amina Serna, filling in for Brine today. Good morning again, everyone. We now turn to President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign. Yesterday on Truth Social, President Trump announced that he has fired Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Nome.

1:01In the post, Trump said he will elevate Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullin to the cabinet post. This is the first time in this term that Trump has replaced anyone in his cabinet. Nome will be appointed as a special envoy for quote, the shield of the Americas. As the news broke yesterday afternoon, media outlets reported that Trump was critical of one exchange in particular that took place with Republican Senator Kennedy earlier this week. Nome was asked during a congressional testimony about her role in improving contracts for a $220 million ad campaign encouraging immigrants to self-deport. Caitlin Dickerson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer at The Atlantic, who has been covering immigration since the first Trump administration. Her recent piece in The Atlantic is a profile of a former New York City mixed immigration status family, who has just recently moved back to Mexico, where the family's undocumented father is originally from. She joins us now to talk about the latest news and her reporting.

2:04Caitlin, welcome back to WNYC. Hi, thanks so much for having me. We're going to be joined by the couple in your latest Atlantic article in just a few to talk about how the Trump administration's hostility towards undocumented immigrants is forcing mixed immigration status families to make some really hard choices. But first I want to ask you for your take on the latest news. On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Nome was met with skepticism from Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who argued during a hearing that more than $200 million in ad campaigns to encourage immigrants to self-deport. He was deeply skeptical of why this cost so much. So let's hear a little under a minute of that exchange. How do you square that concern for waste, which I share, with the fact that you have spent

3:06$120 million running television advertisements that feature you prominently? Sir, the president tasked me with getting the message out to the country and to other countries where we were seeing the invasion come from, with putting commercials out that told them that if they were in this country illegally, that they needed to leave or we would detain them and remove them and they'd not get the chance to come back to America the right way. That has been extremely effective. Ask you to run these advertisements, is that right? We had that conversation, yes. Caitlin, for listeners who aren't familiar, last February, the DHS announced the ad campaign, which features Nome telling migrants to go home or face deportation. Can you tell us more about that ad campaign and why the political fallout now? Sure. So the ad campaign is part of a broader approach that involves social media posts, illustrations

4:12that DHS has commissioned and television commercials as well, trying to spread the message about this aggressive crackdown campaign and really openly asking people without legal status to leave the United States. It's in so much of the agency's messaging, just a comment that I received from them on a story earlier this week said that we encourage anyone without legal status in the United States to take advantage of the cash offer the administration has made to anyone who's willing to self-deport. So this idea of an intimidation campaign to encourage people to leave the United States if they don't have status is not controversial in the eyes of the administration. It's really central to the goals that they have. I think that what happened with Secretary Nome losing her job has to do with a couple of things. We all know and we've seen in the past that at times President Trump can turn on top

5:13members of his administration who are seen as taking up too much attention, distracting certainly from him. That may be the case to some extent with Secretary Nome, but I think the real political reality that culminates in a moment like this is that immigration enforcement went from President Trump's top issue, what he considered to be his most popular issue when he won the presidency to one of his least popular. Now Americans have become very disillusioned with ISIS behavior and certainly with the killings of civilians, U.S. civilian protesters were made good and Alex Prety in addition to people who ISIS was actually trying to arrest and deport. I think that the administration is concerned about that heading into the midterm elections and wants to show that they're making a change. First that was by putting Tom Homan, who was Trump's borders are in charge of ice enforcement over Gregory Bavino that kind of bombastic and controversial border patrol leader and

6:17now by replacing Secretary Nome. I will say the administration has been very clear that the aggressive crackdown isn't going to end. So I think we're seeing a change in leadership, but I wouldn't expect that the deportation campaign is going to wind down by any means. Let's talk about that change in leadership. Trump said he will elevate Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullin to the cabinet post. So what do we know about Senator Mullin and how he might conduct Trump's deportation agenda? Well, he's a junior senator from Oklahoma and he's been in lockstep with the president throughout his career in Congress. He's shown himself to be a reliable Trump supporter and advocate. And I think that he'll really continue to do what Christy Nome did at DHS. You know, the DHS secretary position is an interesting one. You're running an agency of 250,000 people, but immigration is one of our most politicized

7:19issues. And so whereas 15, 20 years ago, a DHS secretary might have had a little bit more autonomy. Really since that first Trump presidency, there's been a lot of top-down influence directly from the White House and that's especially true under this Trump administration. Trump's top immigration advisor, Stephen Miller and the White House meets regularly. I believe on a daily basis with leadership at DHS and really this DHS secretary, Mark Wayne Mullin, is going to be expected to carry out the wishes of the White House, not to be an individual actor who's going to come up with his own ideas, but to do what Trump wants him to do and what Stephen Miller wants him to do as long as Miller continues to have the high level of influence that he has. And Nome will be appointed as special envoy for the quote, shield of the Americas. That's a new role that the president will announce, I guess, on this Saturday. Do we know what that might entail?

8:20I think that Christy Nome's future really remains an open question. It's not clear if she's been given a position that is intended to be so insignificant that she'll leave government or stay out of the way. I don't expect her to have any significant influence on homeland security issues. I think this public replacement of her is a pretty clear message from the White House that they don't want to see Nome, at least right now, in any kind of a public facing leadership position of high influence. And so my suspicion at this point is that it's more of a figurehead role. We'll have to see, is it possible that Nome can have a comeback in Trump's eyes at some point? It is, but I think it would be pretty hard to do after something this publicly embarrassing frankly. All right. Moving on to your latest for the Atlantic, you report 4.2 million American citizens and permanent residents in the United States have an undocumented spouse, and 6.3 million

9:25children have an undocumented parent. Before we bring in our guests, can you tell us more about the former New York City family that you profiled? Yeah. So Rachel and Irvie Cruz, who are on the line with us, we first met in 2016. And I actually wrote a story about them in the New York Times. I was interested right after Trump's first election in how mixed-status families were processing the news and how they were going to try to navigate this new world where even during his first presidency, Trump had made these promises to go after anybody without legal status. And as you just said, there are millions of American citizens and permanent legal residents who have undocumented spouses who are caught in this limbo. There's no way for most of them to legalize, no matter what they do, no matter how long they've been here. So lots of people stuck in this in between state. And we stayed in touch over the years. I'm sure they'll share with you more about this, but there are two daughters Sarah and

10:26Anna were very young when we first started talking. I think they were two and four years old. And the idea of uprooting the family to Mexico at that point, I think was pretty daunting. It wasn't clear after Trump's first election which direction the United States was headed in. I mean, in 2016, there was still some optimism about comprehensive immigration reform that sort of loaded around in Congress, starting around the years, 2003, 2004. There was still some momentum there, but I think when Trump was elected for the second time, it just became clear that this was a nasty-portation campaign. But the public voted for and the stress and the fear of what might happen to Irvi became too much. Listeners, we know we have several of you out there who are a part of mixed immigration status families or have mixed immigration status families in your communities that can

11:29mean undocumented immigrants as we will talk about shortly, but also green card holders, Lisa holders, there seems to be a lot of us here in New York City who have this sort of mid-smatch. So help us report this story. What sort of conversations are you having about the future with your family members? Do you know of anyone who has decided to go back to their country of origin? Or maybe you want to share how hard it was to obtain legal residency in the United States in the first place. Tell us your immigration stories at 212433 WNYC that's 2124339692. You can also text that number. And joining us now are Rachel and Irvi Cruz. Welcome to WNYC. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having us from sunny Mexico. Irvi, you want to tell us a little bit about your journey to the United States?

12:29Yeah, hi, good morning, everyone. So I'm original from Mexico. I moved to the United States when I was 19 years old. I had a dream to have a better life, better future, new places, risk everything and try something new. And I decided to do it when I was 19, 27 years later, decided to go back home. Now for a good reason, the way I want to go back, but I did it. And this is really hard for him to talk about, obviously. So this is Rachel. And so I'll chime in whenever it gets a little bit too hard. And we can unpack all of the reasons why it's so hard for him to talk about this. Because he lives the majority of his life in New York. And for a long time, we thought that's the way it would always be. And Rachel, before we get into some of the decisions your family had to make, you do have

13:33two daughters who are born and raised in New York City. Do you want to tell us a little bit about them? Of course. So Sada is now 13 and Ana is 11. Like all parents, we think that they are incredible. We know that based on their school performance, that they're doing really well, they're intelligence, they're empathetic. And we thought we had figured out the whole New York City game about getting them into gifted and talented programs and middle schools and eventually applying to high school and doing all of the right after school activities and summer programs. And so that's really the space we were in. Always with this underlying knowledge that their father was undocumented in the United States. Things could change, but living in New York City, surrounded by, like you said, other undocumented folks, other mixed status families, there was always, like Caitlin said, this level of

14:38optimism that I think changed for us with the current presidency. But yeah, go ahead, please. No, I was just going to say back to my kids, because that was the usual question, they're incredible, and we're so proud of them for adjusting to a situation we couldn't have envisioned a year ago. Right. Caitlin, in her reporting writes about how things seemed to shift quite drastically during the summer of 2024, actually, when President Biden announced the Keeping Families Together program that would finally allow people like Irvy to become citizens through their American spouse. But after you applied to that program, things changed very quickly. Can you walk us through what I have next? Sure. I mean, I had, you know, I'm going to keep using that word optimism that Caitlin uses to is there is always this, like, even during the toughest times throughout the last few decades,

15:44like these slivers of hope that something would change. And so the Keeping Families Together Act was one of those things. I spent a very long Sunday gathering all of the documents that the program asked for. I sent it in. I believe the next day is when it was struck down. And that's really was a turning point for us, because not only were our hopes dashed, but now the government had all of our information. And so we had a lot of questions about, well, what do we do now? And obviously, in the back of our minds, an option for us was always to go back to Wahaka, which is where my husband is from. And do you both, I don't know who wants to answer this question, but when did you realize that you needed to move the family back? Actually, what's our decision that we had like a little talk before December of 2024?

16:44Rachel mentioned that things are going to get not good in the country. It looks like the way he was thinking, the way he was acting, the way he wants to do the things. It will affect me a lot. And we start talking a little more like a decision that we should make. What was the best for our family? Because those are priority for us, our kids, our family, our happiness. And even though we tried to look for a lot of options and tried to be positive, like we ended it. There is no way I can't, you know, I'm going to get what I deserve, which is the opportunity to become a citizen. I realized that I get a really disappointed. I tried to not drag my family on that feeling. I tried to be positive, but you know, like if I was honest to everyone, everybody was honest in, I think as a family, we decided that the best decision to do is just go, you know, leave. Leave before things get bad for me, it's get arrested, it's like the porter or, you know, be on jail for something that I haven't done yet, just because my skin color, because

17:48where I'm from, because I don't have a paper, this is that I'm now from there, like it will scare everyone in the family. So then at first, it wasn't easy, it was only Rachel and I, then we bring the girls. And we talk. And then after that, we bring our entire family, which is where I'm parents, my parents. And everybody supports us to decisions, like I think we make the right decision, because even though like we, we suffer in like missing what we left, you know, like our family, our lives, we all together, you know, we're supporting each other, things here and that is easy as it used to be. It's hard to start over again. It's hard to go back, you know, learn many things and go back and you say it's hard, but we here, we here, we, I think that the decision we make is one of the bad decisions we, we, we ever made, you know, I'm still a positive thinking that, you know, like my kids never regret me or throw something on my face for taking them away from, from their

18:49house, from their country, from their friends. But we, we, like my kids are so positive, like they're, they're really nice kids, like I'm glad like that, that, like we did it all together, you know, it's a, it's a great decision. And I think we, we, we okay with the issue we made. And to clarify Christine Noam's ad campaign had nothing to do with our decision to go to Mexico. Right. Caitlin, to bring you back into this conversation, we, we did talk about Noam's self-deportation campaign at the beginning of this segment and the ad money used to promote it. But is, is it actually a thing? I know it's not a part of Rachel and Irvy's story, but, um, is it, do we have any sense of how many people are impacted? Uh, they, I mean, oh, unfortunately, we don't have numbers and the administration has thrown out at one point they said two million people have self-deported, but without any evidence behind it. So we, we really don't know how many people have left the United States.

19:50I would say anecdotally as an immigration reporter, I do hear stories about people making this kind of decision a lot for this piece. I interviewed the head of an advocacy group called American Families United that represents those four plus million U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who have an undocumented spouse. The head of that group, Ashley De Acevedo told me that she hears every day from another family who's made this choice. I think to Rachel and Irvy's credit, they paid close attention to Trump when he was running for president and they took him seriously and knew that what he was promising would come to fruition. Early on, lots of people were skeptical on whether the administration would, would follow through. You know, in part of that is through some misinformation. Trump would go back and forth when he was campaigning. He'd say we're going to focus on the worst of the worst, but then also that anyone without status was at risk and, and to their credit, the cruises understood what was going to happen. I think before a lot of people in the country did, and so I think that the impact of the

20:51ad campaigns has really been more on those folks who were holding out hope in the first few months that perhaps the administration wouldn't be quite as aggressive as they promised during the campaign that, you know, there's, I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to, including Irvy, you know, we look back at their lives in the United States deeply in sconce in their communities, contributing members of their communities, people who are working and supporting families. And I think a lot of people think about common sense, you know, why would DHS come after me when I don't have legal status, but I've contributed so much and really taken so little from this country, people really held on to hope that that would in some way protect them. I think the ad campaigns are really trying to make clear to people that that isn't the case, something that Rachel and Irvy included so early on, and I just wanted to give a little bit more information to share just how deeply in sconce they were in New York City.

21:52I have to say that Rachel was a beloved New York City public school teacher, spent more than 17 years in the system and ultimately rose to become the head of a program that teaches English as a new language, as her at her school, Irvy worked at a beaster on the upper west side for more than a decade and was eventually promoted to become a manager. He took on a second job and was eventually making more money than Rachel. As Rachel mentioned, the girls were in gifted and talented schools and they were able to borrow against Rachel's retirement at one point and purchase a house in the Bronx, little Italy. So they really had achieved a semblance of the American dream, the New York City dream before making this decision, which was part of what made it so significant and impactful. And I just wanted to give people in the city who are listening a better picture of the family that they're hearing from. Thanks for that, Caitlin. We have a text that goes something that you were just talking about. Listener writes, I am also in a mixed status marriage.

22:57Please let listeners know there are two bills in Congress that would help our families. They're spearheaded by a group called American Families United, as you mentioned, Caitlin. One is the Dignity Act and one is the AFU Act. We really need people to call, especially Republican Congress members and senators asking for these to be sponsored. Caitlin, are you familiar with those two acts you want to give us a brief overview? I am. I mean, the basic idea is to allow people who are married to a U.S. citizen to immediately apply for legal status. A lot of people, even if you marry a U.S. citizen, you face legal bars on your entry to the United States, which is a little confusing because you're already here. But having been here without authorization can subject you to a bar of either two, five or ten years, and there's also a permanent bar that you're faced because he spent significant

23:57time in the United States left and then returned. So just the act of going back and forth across the border, that can subject you to a permanent legal bar from gaining legal status, regardless of whether you're married to an American citizen. And that's why you have more than four million people who are in this predicament, and that's what those bills are hoping to address. It was interesting to me when I interviewed Ashley D'Alessio Veto, as I mentioned in the head of American Families United, she talked about how, for years, that group has organized an annual trip to Washington, D.C. around Valentine's Day for members to meet with lawmakers and explain their predicament. And she said that lawmakers have admitted in some of those meetings, not realizing themselves that this was an issue. You know, it's a reflection of our very convoluted existing immigration laws that haven't been updated since 1996, that are badly in need of changes, and especially ones for families like this one, who I think when you look at polling by and large, Americans tend to support

25:00and support the idea of a legal pathway, but it just doesn't exist. I actually, Caitlin, I want to get your take on a caller who identifies as Mexican American and stands by the deportation campaign, and I wonder if you have a response on the other side. Here's Gabriel in Bergen County, New Jersey, hi Gabriel, you're on WNYC. Hi, thanks for taking my call. Thanks for calling in. What would you like to say? Oh, just that, my dad is a documented, he has a green card, but he's not a citizen, my mom's an American citizen, so I'm half Mexican, half American. I'm part of the Latino coalition that ended up voting for Trump, and I still stand by Trump. I don't stand by necessarily all the tactics that we are using, you know, showing up to home depots, and a lot of my family is illegal in Long Island, they all work construction, the same thing. My only thing is, is that blue states that are, you know, have a lot of immigrants in

26:02jails who have committed crimes, they're not working with the Trump administration, they're not handing them over, like they did with Obama. 80% of Obama's deportations, he was the deporter in chief, we're from jails for people who committed crimes, but since it's Trump, it's Republican, oh, we don't want to be seen working with him, so no, not letting the jails, New Jersey, stamping New York, it's just like, it's like we can't get it done, so now they're going to all these places where they really shouldn't be picking up people from, you know, construction sites and stuff. I don't agree with that, but I also don't agree with the Democrats, you know, holding them out of jails of, you know, of places where people should be being deported. That's kind of what I wanted to get across. Gabriel, thank you so much for your call, Caitlin. I wonder if you have a response to this, I think some of the numbers, Gabriel cited, maybe you have your fingers on the pulse on that, but how do you respond? Yeah, thanks for calling in. I think it's a really interesting perspective, you know, with regard to the police cooperating with immigration enforcement, I think that the current Trump administration has been

27:08pushing some pretty effective spin on that issue, especially recently, and that the reality is that the situation has changed over time, so when it comes to ICE detainers and ICE wanting to work directly with local law enforcement, ICE has the ability to pick people up who are facing serious criminal charges or who have convictions within 48 hours. But sometimes the issue is that ICE wants jails to hold on to people beyond what is constitutionally allowable, you know, in the United States you can't be held indefinitely if you're not facing a charge, but sometimes if somebody was temporarily booked into police custody, ICE will want police to hold on to them for a longer period of time, extending those constitutional limits to give ICE additional time to pick people up and often police and sheriff's departments won't agree to do that because there have been lots of lawsuits

28:09over these detainers and they usually end up being really expensive for local law enforcement agencies because of violating people's constitutional rights on ICE's behalf. You know, there has been shifts back and forth with the willingness of local law enforcement to work with ICE. I don't think it's as partisan as the caller described, you know, the ultimate data on the Obama administration's deportations and I actually don't have the number in front of me to corroborate that 80% had criminal records, like the caller said. But early in the Obama administration, really ICE was pursuing arrests indiscriminately and it wasn't until that second term that President Obama faced so much backlash for arresting people without criminal records that he then imposed these now kind of notorious enforcement priorities directing ICE to focus on people who were considered to be a threat to the public. President Trump, when he took office the first time, he eliminated those

29:14priorities that directed ICE to focus on people with serious criminal records. So that's really the reason why so many people are being pursued right now who don't because President Biden put them back into place. And then when Trump took office the second time, he took those priorities away again. So I think that's the primary reason why you're seeing so many people without criminal records being pursued. I think the argument that ICE has no choice after, but to go after those people because they don't have access to those who are threats to the public doesn't really totally make sense. The President could have easily kept those limitations in place and found ways to go after people who he actually considers to be priorities if that's the case. We have a text that goes back to something Irvy said a little bit earlier in our conversation. The listener writes, quote, moving back implies that the family lived there before. They didn't. Only one member was from Mexico. The family, quote, moved to Mexico, not, quote,

30:18moved back to Mexico. So as we, unfortunately, run out of time in this segment, Rachel and Irvy, do you want to talk a little bit about that listener's text or maybe just reflects a little bit on how you and your family are adjusting? Yeah, definitely. You know, we've been struggling a lot with the terminology, like back and back to and home. I think listening and, you know, for me personally seeing Irvy getting so upset just now talking about our life in New York really reminds me that even if we're not going to be living there, that New York will always be a home. And, you know, immigrants like Irvy are what make New York such a special place. And, you know, he's moved back here. I have moved here. This is where we live. But, you know, there's just, there's no place like New York. And I think, you know, we would have been great there. New York would have

31:20been lucky to have us. We're really lucky to be sitting in a beautiful place right now about to eat a wonderful home cooked meal. But there's just something about that bustling city with millions of people from all over the world that just can't be beat. Rachel and Irvy crews are New Yorkers living in Mexico after fear of deportation by the Trump administration. Caitlin Dickerson is a staff writer at the Atlantic. Thank you all for your time today and, and sharing your story. Thank you for having us. Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. Since then, New York Public Radio's rigorous journalism has gone on to win a Peabody Award and a Dupont Columbia Award, among others. In addition to this award-winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.