Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Crime in the Media Fall 2020

For the last Iblog, I am using a Frontline documentary, Marcos Doesn’t Live Here. A truly heartbreaking story of a family getting ripped apart. Marcos Perez, a father, and husband of U.S citizens were deported in 2010 from his life he loved. Children lost their dad, a wife lost her husband in a blink of an eye. Elizabeth Perez is the wife and mother of Marcos kids, she is also a Marine Veteran who has served 10 years for our country. Fighting ten years of her life for a country that is not letting her husband in the country. Marco got in trouble in the United States when he ran through a yellow light. The police called Elizabeth questioning who the man was since they could not identify him. They started to threaten to call ICE on her husband if Elizabeth did not explain who he was and her phone died at the worst time. As discussed in our class PowerPoint, “U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement is responsible for interior enforcement, detention, and removal operations” (Ewing, 2015). The officers were holding Marco on a traffic violation and the lawyer had told Elizabeth to not pay for the traffic violation because if she were to pay it off the bail ICE could come and take him at any moment. Since she did not pay the bail he was held by state authorities which is better conditions than at the ICE detention centers. As discussed in the Crimmigration Article, “ More behaviors have been categorized as criminal offenses for immigrants, but not for non‐immigrants, ultimately leading to immigrants’ surveillance, apprehension, detention, and deportation”(Menjivar, 2018). After spending fourteen days in Mayfield Heights they turned Marco into immigration and the next thing the family faced changed their life forever.

Elizabeth was surprised when Marco was calling her cellphone but even more, surprised when he was calling from the border where ICE dropped him off at. As the Perez’s are struggling to be apart from each other Marco can not come back into the United States for a minimum of ten years because of the permanent bar. The law is called a permanent bar, if somebody enters the United States and they are deported and they choose to come back and then get deported again. Another problem that comes up is that Marco committed misdemeanors in 2001 which would make it extremely difficult to bring anyone back to the United States. Elizabeth soon got a call from their lawyer saying that ICE denied the petition, that they weighed the equities, but they’re not able to grant parole at this point. However, they did not give up, HOLA set up a march to be played on media on Cinco de Mayo therefore, people can see the people who are suffering from our broken immigration system while they are celebrating their culture. Every time they would send the petition to ICE it has been denied so Marco’s lawyer told Elisabeth that Marcos can go to the US-Mexican border and present the petition to the border patrol himself. The next morning Mexican Consulate called and said if Marcos showed up at the checkpoint so that we could submit his petition, that he would be arrested and detained and held for up to two years. Even though they were told by their lawyers that they could do it. Elizabeth got tired of the wait and took her two kids to move to Mexico with Marcos. However, the problems did not stop there. Marco’s been having trouble finding a job and with another kid on the way, Marco needs to get a good job. Elizabeth and Marco are giving it one last chance for Marco’s visa interview in 2020, and if it doesn’t work, Elizabeth is just going to go back to the United States, and Marco’s staying in Mexico. If his visa interviews fail they are calling the quits since the Criminal Justice System is treating their life as a game. Elizabeth does not want to raise a family in Mexico because of the danger she could put her family in.

Overall, I believe this documentary is something that everyone should watch because I believe Immigration is a topic that citizens do not talk about. I believe it is crazy that Elizabeth has fought for our country for ten years, has four kids with Marco, and married Marco but still will not let Marco live with his family in the US. Therefore, Elizabeth and her children moved to Mexico to keep their family together. The children went from going to an American school speaking English to being put into school in Mexico school not knowing Spanish. Now the children have to learn Spanish or they will be held behind in school. It also makes them a target of being victimized. 

                                                                  References

Ewing, Walter A., Daniel E. Martinez, and Ruben Rumbaut. 2015. The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States. Washington, DC: American

Immigration Council.

Marcos Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. (2019, April 15). Retrieved December 09, 2020, from

           https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/marcos-doesnt-live-here-anymore/

Menjivar, C., Cervantes, A. G., Alvord, D. (2018). The expansion of “crimmigration,” mass detention,                   and deportation. Sociology Compass, p. 2 https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12573