It’s the first day of school and the de la Rosa siblings each have a job to do.
Naomi sweeps the floor, then rushes out the door. Oldest brother Jim is driving her to Pueblo Magnet High School, where she is a sophomore.
Ten-year-old Bobby checks on their father as he waits for Bill, the second oldest, to get off the phone and walk him to school.
“Are you going to have cereal? Come on, then, I’ll get you some.” Bobby leads the way as his 82-year-old dad leans on a walker and shuffles to the kitchen.
Bobby has already made his own breakfast: a peanut butter sandwich.
“Here’s your banana and a knife,” the fifth-grader tells his father as he plants a goodbye kiss on the man’s forehead.
Their mother, Gloria, is 60 miles away from this bustle, alone in her little apartment in Nogales, Sonora, getting ready for another day cleaning houses.
In 2009, Gloria Arellano de la Rosa, 46, went to Juárez, Mexico, for what she thought would be an appointment to get her green card. It seemed like a slam dunk — she was following legal advice and was sponsored by her husband of more than a decade. Instead, she faced a 10-year ban from returning to the United States because years before, she had crossed illegally after overstaying a visa.
If she were to cross illegally again, she would risk her chance of ever being able to live here without fear of deportation.
Gloria and her husband, Arsenio de la Rosa, thought about moving the whole family south of the border. In the end, Bobby lived with Gloria for a year in Nogales, Sonora. Then Jim and Bill appealed to their parents to do what was best for the baby of the family, and that meant bringing him to a place where he has more opportunities — but no mother.
The de la Rosas illustrate the complexity of U.S. immigration law. The kids, all born in the United States, are American citizens and have every right to stay. Arsenio, who was born in Nogales, Sonora, to an American citizen, didn’t apply for citizenship until the early 2000s.
They first tried to legalize Gloria’s status in 2003, but a notary filed the wrong paperwork. Then in 2008 her application was denied in Tucson and she was told that she had to apply from her native country. When she went to Juárez to do that, she learned that leaving the United States triggered a ban created in 1996 to penalize those who came here illegally and stayed.
The missteps, the bad advice and the delays that stand between Gloria and legal residency are common challenges for families that straddle the U.S.-Mexico border. The nation’s unauthorized population has swelled to about 11 million, many of whom put down roots here and started families. They are parents to about 4.5 million U.S. citizen children, the Pew Research Center estimates.
Because of the lack of stability in their family lives, multiple studies show the kids in that group are less likely to do well in school and are more likely to live in poverty and battle depression and anxiety.
That’s not just bad for those kids and their families; it’s bad for all of us, says Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, dean at the University of California in Los Angeles and co-author of several reports on the subject.
“Think about a generation from now — who do you think are going to be your cops, your nurses, your doctors, your lawyers?” he asks. “It’s going to be these children.”
But the odds are against them.
A shocking phone call
It was a warm afternoon in October 2009 and Bill came home from school to wait for a phone call from his parents. They had traveled to Ciudad Juárez for Gloria’s long-awaited immigration appointment.
When the phone rang, he rushed to pick it up. Behind his mother’s voice he could hear the rain.
“Mijo, no me la dieron,” she said. They didn’t give it to me.
“What do you mean, no?” he asked.
“They said I have to wait 10 years.”
His mother had been nervous about leaving the country, but Bill was confident. Each time she got an immigration letter, he translated it for her and reassured her everything was fine.
“There’s no way they won’t let you in,” he would tell her. She had no criminal record. She volunteered in the community. She helped out at her kids’ schools and at church.
“You have four American citizen children. My dad is old and struggles with his health.”
Then 15 and a high-school sophomore, Bill felt his world was turned upside down. What would happen to their family? Would they have to leave everything behind and go with their mother?
He hung up the phone and stared at a family photo taken when he was 13. Arsenio, in a gray suit and cowboy hat, looks into the camera with a stern look on his face; Gloria, young and beautiful, wears a pink shirt and holds Bobby, who was a toddler; Naomi poses next to their dad while Bill and Jim stand in the back.
It was the last picture of the entire family, all together in one place. It still sits on the living room table today.
Bill has always been the mover and shaker of the family.
So immediately after hanging up the phone that day, he got to work.
First he broke the news to Jim, who was 17, the oldest of the de la Rosa siblings.
“Shut up,” was his big brother’s unbelieving response.
“They gave her 10 years,” Bill relayed, but that was the extent of his knowledge.
“What’s going to happen now?” Jim asked.
“I don’t know.”
Bill’s confident demeanor and thick-rimmed glasses make him look every bit the politician he hopes to be one day. He describes himself as an average, responsible young man just doing what needs to be done, but his drive is anything but ordinary.
When Gloria struggled to find a full-time job, Bill — then just 8 years old — sold flour tortillas and tamales around south Tucson: $1 for a dozen tortillas, $8 for a dozen of his mom’s homemade tamales.
He was never afraid to ask for help when he or his siblings needed it, always finding sponsors so he could play baseball or go on school trips his parents couldn’t afford.
This time was no different. He called lawyers, lawmakers, anyone he thought could help. He asked Adelita Grijalva, daughter of U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, and a Tucson Unified School District board member he had met while volunteering for Pima County Teen Court, for a letter telling the judge how important it is that his mom stay with the family.
“Instead of sort of falling apart and saying, ‘I’m in high school and this is a lot for me to deal with,’ he just dealt with it,” Adelita Grijalva says.
Soon he had formed a network of family and church friends who checked up on the family and dropped off prepared meals. He taught himself how to cook by looking up recipes on the Internet and calling his mother in Nogales.
He made sure his siblings did their homework, that all his father’s medical appointments were scheduled. He often stayed up past midnight to finish assignments once everyone was in bed.
When his mother called from the border — in those early months she would lean against the metal fence and sob for hours, looking toward the U.S. — he would try to calm her down.
When she said she couldn’t do it anymore, he asked her to be patient.
He tried to remain strong for the rest of the family.
“As long as I saw them happy, that was a self-comforting process for me,” he says. In his room, alone, he would cry, usually out of sadness that his siblings were so sad. Then he would shelve those emotions: “I guess I turned that despair into something else.”
Struggles and success
Bill’s motivation to work hard and strive for success comes from his parents, who always told him that education was his ticket out of poverty. When he and Jim were in elementary school, Gloria would take them to the hotel where she worked. While she cleaned the rooms, they helped change pillowcases or empty trash cans.
She wanted them to see what it was like to work for a living.
“See how much your mother is working because she didn’t go to school?” she would say. She only finished fourth grade before she had to contribute to her household.
Bill learned the lesson well. He became part of the National Honor Society and the Student Advisory Council. He founded the College Admissions Club at Pueblo to motivate students to strive for higher education.
He travels the country participating in leadership conferences and accepting awards — including the Harry S. Truman scholarship, a highly competitive and prestigious scholarship for students with demonstrated leadership potential and a commitment to public service. With the honor came a letter from President Obama, which Bill read to his mother when he visited her in Nogales this summer.
He is studying sociology and Latin American studies with a minor in government and legal studies and is in his last year of college. After that, he plans to work to help foster relations between Mexico and the United States and is “slowly trying to find alternative routes to tackling this issue” of immigration.
Bill was the valedictorian of Pueblo’s Class of 2012 and was named one of 1,000 Gates Millennium scholars nationwide, which got him a full ride to Bowdoin College in Maine, one of the nation’s top liberal arts schools.
In Spanish, he dedicated his high school graduation speech to his mother. Although she wasn’t there with him, he said, she was in his heart and he loved her.
It was one of the moments when he missed her the most — he was there because of her, yet she couldn’t see him walk up on that stage. She couldn’t hear him give his speech.
When he was offered a scholarship to Bowdoin, he struggled with the decision. He knew he could accomplish more if he went, but with him gone and Jim off in the U.S. Marine Corps, it would be up to Naomi to carry the household.
One night before he left, he took her out for dinner at Panda Express. “Look, I’m going to be gone, now it’s going be up to you,” he told her. “You have these responsibilities, but don’t be afraid to ask for help.
“Make sure my Dad’s OK, make sure he’s eating properly and most importantly, stay on top of Bobby. Don’t let him fall apart. Support him, stay on top of school and don’t let him fall behind.”
Naomi was 12 years old.
