'It is coming out of the shadows:' Lorain woman able to apply for DACA under new executive order

LORAIN — Jessica can remember the sound of an infant crying and a man urging the mother to shut it up. There are other children crying too, it is hot in the car they are pressed into — several families, a woman and her baby, then-8-year-old Jessica, her two siblings and her mother stacked on top of one another after trekking four hours through the mountains avoiding the sweeping gaze of a helicopter whirring overhead. She can't move her feet, everyone is too close. The "coyote," paid to smuggle them over the U.S.-Mexico border, takes the group to a safe house. They stay there several days until Jessica's older brother can pay the fee for them to leave. "It's like kidnapping," she said. From there, the family moves to Lorain. Jessica, now 29, has lived undocumented in U.S. for more than 20 years. She cannot get a driver's license, bank account or health insurance. While her three children, ages 12, 13 and 14, are U.S. citizens, there were few options for Jessica until President Joe Biden signed an executive order Jan. 20 strengthening Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. First passed by President Barack Obama in 2012, DACA allows undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to remain in the U.S.and obtain a work permit and other protections. DACA recipients must pass a background check and renew their status every two years. Jessica, whose last name is known to The Chronicle-Telegram but is being withheld until her paperwork is completed, said she tried to get DACA protections in 2012, paying a lawyer $1,500, but it fell through. When DACA initially rolled out, Jessica was unable to get DACA status because she did not have a photo ID from Mexico, said Anabel Barron, a caseworker at El Centro de Servicios Sociales. Barron came with her family from a small town in Mexico as a child, and as an adult spent years fighting to stay in the country she'd come to call home. Barron understands the struggle Jessica faces as an undocumented person. "Living in the shadows," as both women call it. As such, Barron is helping Jessica apply for DACA now that the Mexican consulate in Detroit has agreed to grant Jessica's passport without the normally required Mexican photo ID. 'Stay strong' Sitting in her living room on worn leather couches under black script signs of "Hope, Faith and Love," Jessica is surrounded by pictures of her children and niece. She speaks quietly while her children work on homework in the kitchen and a cage full of parakeets chirp in the other room. She and her children have settled into a rental unit owned by a landlord who didn't ask about her immigration status — but it is precarious. Jessica's undocumented status has kept her working under-the-table jobs, paying cash for everything and barring her from getting her driver's license — but she has to drive to take her children to Lorain Preparatory Academy and to get to work. "I'm driving without a license and I have to do it because I have to work. ... I'm scared but I have to do it, there's no choice," she said. "I know I'm doing something wrong because I know that's wrong — I'm breaking the law but I have to do it." One of the few images she has of herself as a child in Mexico is her kindergarten picture. She is able to provide the Consulate with school photo IDs from her time at long-gone Masson Elementary and Lorain Middle School. She never attended high school. At age 14, Jessica dropped out of school and moved to California with her boyfriend, later the father of her three children, to escape years of sexual abuse by her older brother and stepfather. Girls in Mexico are raised to cook and clean, and little else, she said — something her mother required her to do when they first arrived in the U.S. while leaving her alone with those men. Her mother didn't believe Jessica when she told her of the abuse that started when they were still in Mexico. "She (doesn't) even care about what happened to me," she said. Jessica has since broken ties with her mother. Her boyfriend at the time was an adult who was abusive and had a drug problem — cycling in and out of prison for the five years she lived with his family 2,500 miles away from her own. When many of the DACA recipients Barron helps come in to apply, they are supported by their parents or other family, she said. Jessica had no one. By the time she was 17, Jessica was pregnant with her third child and working long hours in strawberry fields when her boyfriend's parents kicked her out of their house. Homeless for a short while, she came back to Lorain and has stayed in the area ever since. For more than a decade, she has endured low-wage jobs in food service or housekeeping for employers that often exploit her due to her immigration status — but day in and day out, she does everything for her children. "I tell them I want them to learn to be independent because sometimes I go to work and I don't know if I'm going to come back. And I like them to be strong, that if something happens, they need to stay strong ... I want them to go to college and do something with their lives — maybe lawyer, nurse or anything like that." She also wants those opportunities for herself. 'I'm changing someone's life' On Feb. 18, Barron will drive Jessica to Detroit to get her passport, an affidavit from El Centro in hand confirming Jessica's identity in lieu of the Mexican photo ID. The consulate has agreed to waive the $149 fee in light of Jessica's situation, Barron said. It is one step toward eliminating some of the fear Jessica feels when leaving her home, and may help to lift a sadness that has weighed on her for years. "It's hard, everything that I went through, and it affects me — sometimes I don't want it to affect me but it affects me," she said. "Sometimes it affects me, being illegal here, because I don't have a bank account, you go to the doctor's, they ask you for ID; sometimes the store asks you for ID; or you go anywhere they ask you for ID. Or you're going to buy a prescription, they ask you for ID. I get so depressed about that because it's like nobody knows who you are." Jessica plans to get her GED, and hopes to attend college — possibly studying law so she can help other undocumented immigrants. El Centro estimates there are about 3,000 undocumented families in Lorain County. DACA recipients are more like American citizens than where they were brought from, Barron said. Many arrived as very young children with no say in the matter and were raised in the U.S., and they may have no memory of the area or culture they came from. Many don't know they are undocumented until they are required to give a Social Security number to go to college, she said. Helping Jessica get her Social Security card and work permit will change her life, Barron said. "It is coming out of the shadows, I like to say it, every time that someone gets a DACA work permit. It's like your wings are spreading to fly, you're getting ready to fly," she said. "And then what you do, when you start flying, it depends on you — because look at where I'm at right now. My choices, once I came out of the shadows, were endless." Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.