On May 15th, 2007 The Dreamer presented me with a ring and asked if I would marry him and I replied with an ecstatic, "yes!". We had met 7 months before, thanks to a mutual acquaintance, and had been dating ever since. I was aware from the very beginning that The Dreamer had entered the US 7 years earlier on a B1 visa that had since expired and we had already spoken to an immigration attorney to make sure we both fully understood what would be required for The Dreamer to adjust his status. The attorney advised us to get married as soon as possible rather than leave anything to chance and that once married we should have no problem adjusting The Dreamer’s status and getting him temporary permanent residency. Although we were both concerned about his current status, we didn’t want to rush things. We had been dating for just about 7 months and although we knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, we didn’t want to rush just because of “papers”. We didn’t want to give anyone the chance to question our motives for marriage. So, we set about planning a wedding for November of that year.
By the time August, 2007 rolled around, I had purchased a wedding dress, we had reserved our church and attended a premarital class there, we’d put deposits down on flowers, cake and a reception hall and were in the process of designing invitations, which, at the time, my mom had been incessantly urging me to mail out. My cousin had even planned a bridal shower and unfortunately, those invitations had been sent to many family and friends.
Unfortunately, on a Tuesday morning toward the end of August, while at work, I received a call from The Dreamer’s boss. My first reaction was to think that The Dreamer must have been injured in some way, but instead I was told that my fiance was being detained by ICE and had requested that his boss call and notify me. In that instant, all of the plans that we had made, all of the dreams that we had dreamed, were forced to change.
When I was finally able to locate and then speak to The Dreamer I found out that he had been tricked into signing a removal order, which waived his rights to a hearing, and destined him for deportation. The Dreamer explained that when he was picked up by ICE, along with another 150 undocumented workers in the raid on the plant where he worked, he was the very first one in line. He was informed that it would be best if he cooperated, and my husband, being the respectful, upstanding citizen that he is, with not even a single traffic violation to his name, believed them and agreed to cooperate. He was told that no matter what he would be deported – if he signed what he understood at the time to be a voluntary departure (which it was not), he would be back in Peru within 2 weeks, according to the ICE agent; if he didn’t sign, he would supposedly spend at least 2 months in jail before being deported. The Dreamer pleaded to call me or our lawyer, always being told that he could call after he signed. He also explained that he was to be married in just two-and-a-half months to an American citizen, a fact that he was told didn’t matter. The Dreamer, being the first in a line of 150 other detainees, was pushed and prodded, told that he needed to hurry up because they had a lot of other people to get to, and was not given sufficient time to truly read through and comprehend what he was signing. He eventually ended up signing a removal order that had him listed as entering the country illegally, despite the fact that he had entered on a B1 visa.
Over the following month, while The Dreamer sat in detention, I rushed around like a chicken with its head cut off, contracting a lawyer, calling senators, writing the president, appearing in the local newspaper, doing an interview on the local news channel, soliciting letters of support from families and friends, filing a withdrawal of The Dreamer’s signature from the removal order (that he had signed under duress, not even fully understanding the implications of signing it), compiling proof of our love for one another, reassuring my in-laws in Peru who were beside themselves with worry, eating little, crying a lot, and visiting The Dreamer every Tuesday and Thursday morning for our 15 minute visiting time, where we were given the “privilege” of conversing through glass . All of this while trying to maintain a full-time job with, thankfully, a very understanding company. It was a rough month.
While being detained, The Dreamer’s apartment complex decided to evict him, giving me just two days notice to move his entire apartment into my parents’ house as well as the houses of other willing family members, this despite the fact that he had never been late on a single rent payment, and I had paid for him in his absence. After evicting The Dreamer, the apartment complex returned the check that I had given them for his rent and then proceeded to sue The Dreamer for not having paid. They claimed that they couldn’t receive a check for rent from anyone other than The Dreamer.
During that month I also tried to obtain a marriage license and permission to marry The Dreamer in detention, neither of which were ever achieved. The Dreamer had been transferred to detention in another state, a state that required both parties be physically present to request a marriage license, which was an impossibility as long as The Dreamer was being detained.
Despite all the difficulties, I remained faithful, believing with all my heart that we had a good case and that The Dreamer wouldn’t be deported (everyone including our lawyer kept telling us so). But at the end of September, one month after The Dreamer was detained by ICE, he was “removed” to Peru with a 10-year ban from reentering the US, his removal paperwork erroneously stating that he had entered the country illegally. Two days later our motion to withdraw his signature from the removal order was denied.
Two weeks after The Dreamer was deported, I flew down to Peru for the first time to visit him and the following month I resigned from my beloved job in the US in order to pack up my life and prepare for the big move. In December of 2007 I rejoined the Dreamer in Peru and we were married in a civil ceremony with 2 witnesses (The Dreamer’s best friend and his fiance) and 2 guests (The Dreamer’s parents). It was quite a bit different from the wedding we had planned in the U.S., but it was still the day that I made the best decision of my life, the decision to marry my “media naranja”, despite everything that kept trying to pull us apart.
For the next 9 months I lived in Peru with The Dreamer in his parents’ house. I solicited and received my Peruvian residency and even got a job in a travel agency catering to Americans and Europeans, but I never quite managed to adapt to life in Peru. The Dreamer could see how miserable I was and the more we discussed the situation, the more sense it made for me to return to the U.S., not only for my own emotional stability, but also as an opportunity to work in a better-paying job, allowing us to pay off our legal bills and then save for the future. It was a difficult decision to make, but difficult situations sometimes require difficult decisions.
Since August of 2008, The Dreamer and I have been living in two different hemispheres. I visit him as often as my job will allow which is usually about a week and a half every three or four months. It’s not enough, but we have hope that we will soon be living together again. The good news is that we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. At the end of this past April we turned in our final paperwork in the immigration process – our visa waiver packet. According to the embassy there is a minimum 6 month processing time before we will receive a response, so we are impatiently counting down the time before we can finally move on with our lives TOGETHER in whichever country God decides. In the meantime, I’m trying to be as frugal as possible so that if God decides for us to be together in Peru, we might be able to afford our own apartment and finally create a “home” of our own.
