Kimberly Vazquez

The Raid

In the workplace, a raid usually goes like this:  immigration agents physically invade a workplace, unannounced and with militaristic force, to target workers for arrest and deportation. 

At home, this process has established rules: Immigration officers may not enter your home unless they have a warrant. There are two types of warrant —  one for when they are coming to arrest you, and another for when they have permission from a judge to search your home. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can issue arrest warrants, but only a court can issue a search warrant. 

An officer will knock on your door, it is important to not open. The first step is to always ask the officer to identify themselves. With the door closed. “Who are you with?” and or “What agency are you with?” are valid questions to ask. You are allowed to ask this. With the door closed.

The response you are most likely to receive is “I am with the Department of Homeland Security” or “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements.” Both are terrible, and you will feel your blood turn to ice, but it is important to keep the door closed, even when you ask if he has a warrant. 

This should be followed by asking him to pass the warrant under the door. Once he does, examine it. Look for your name, your address and a signature. The warrant will be in English. You most likely do not speak it. There are no other options given to you. 

If the warrant looks valid, meaning it was issued by a court and authorizes a search of your house, you should let the officer in the house. Make sure to wipe the sweat from your palms, steady the rapid thump of your heart and swallow down the lump in your throat.

However, if the warrant does not look valid, you should slide it under the door once more and say it is incorrect. Remember, keep the door closed. 

An officer is not allowed to force you to consent to let him enter your house. There have been instances where agents surround a house with their cars and flash their lights and or will display their gun. This is all an intimidation tactic. The court will probably not consider this to be a valid consent. 

It is important to remember that you still have rights in this country. 

My dad was always a private man. Kept his thick lips closed unless he was speaking to my mom about his day. He had a nasty scar that cradled his left eye, but not once did he ever talk about it with me or my sister. 

I used to think he had been in a big, nasty bar fight in Culiacán, fighting to the teeth, empty beer bottle with serrated ends on one hand while holding a knife on the other. In one iteration, the lights are dimmed and buttery in the bar he’s in, the air is laced with a  pungent smell of tequila, sweat, saliva and blood, and there are two—maybe even three—-bodies already on the floor with stab wounds. My dad is the last one standing, facing off against a burly man who’s more beard than face. Their bodies clash and tousle as the burly man tries to wrench the knife from my father’s grip, but my father is stronger and younger and overpowers him. Still drowning in his ego, however, the burly man somehow manages to rip the beer bottle from my father’s hand, smashing it against his face, sharp ends just slightly missing his left eye. 

In another, he’s facing off against the cartels. But the one time I asked him if his scar was because he had encountered a member, he turned on me so swiftly I barely noticed he had moved at all and smacked the back of my head with a heavy palm. “Say your prayers and hope you never have to deal with the terror they bring,” he spat at me. 

Turns out he had simply fallen off the roof of his childhood home in Mexico and was caught by the state of the art anti-theft security system my grandpa had put in place: lined up broken beer bottles with pointed edges to thwart off anyone who tried to climb up the walls. My mom told me after she rubbed the back of my head—-after giving me a smack of her own, though. (At least I guessed the bottle part correctly.) 

Still, in all of my iterations, my dad always wins.

My mother, on the other hand, wasn’t so private. 

She loved to talk about her day to me, my sister, my dad, the stray dogs and cats, and the plants and cacti she cared for. In the mornings, Texas sun high in the sky, I would always hear her speaking to the plants in a chirpy voice. “Mis bonitas” she called them, and they knew all of our secrets. 

There really wasn’t anything that I didn’t know about her. I knew she was born in (Hospital Angeles Culiacán), that she went to (Instituto Chapultepec), that she wanted to be (a singer) and how she met my dad. 

They had met at a fair—la feria—on a chillier than normal November day. She was wearing a chunky white jacket that had the words “paciencia y fe” stitched in pink thread on the wrists of it, brown fur boots with a scuffed heel, and black earmuffs that were too tight for her head, but had been with her since she was seven-years-old, so she wasn’t getting rid of them so easily. 

She had been on her own that day because her friends had all been busy—school, family, boyfriends, something my mom had yet to experience at seventeen. With the money she had saved up from working at her family’s corner store, she had bought herself a few tickets for the rides, sparing a couple of pesos to buy herself a hot drink. The line hadn’t been long, but the cold was beginning to sink in her cheeks and nose. 

As she huffed into her hands to warm them up, a man—tall, brown, muscular—approached her, hot styrofoam cup of champurado in the hand he had stretched out towards her.  He was only wearing a leather jacket and a scarf that hung loosely from his neck. I like your hair, he had said. Me recuerda a las nubes. 

Each time she tells this story, it is in this moment where her face softens and she looks much younger than she is. The lines carved from stress fade from her mouth and cheeks; her round, gray eyes twinkle. In this moment, she is a young girl looking back on what would change the trajectory of her life. 

“I got lost in his eyes,” she would say with every telling. “His eyes were so warm. La primera vez que lo vi, pense que tenia la luna acurrucada en los ojos.” 

My parents had moved to the United States when they were both twenty-two. I was born a couple of months later. My parents would say that they had escaped the violence of their city, and that they were grateful to be in the United States—safe and far away from death. 

“Land of opportunity," my dad would say with a heavy accent and a big, big grin.  

Living in the United States wasn’t always paradise, though. On a Sunday morning, while Pilar and I watched PBS in the living room of our home, my maternal grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack in his home in Mexico. He had been peeling oranges, listening to the radio. And then he was on the floor. 

My mother had wailed from the kitchen when our oldest cousin called to inform her; the sharp shrills she exhaled could have ripped the paper walls of our house apart. All she repeated was the same thing: He’s gone. I can’t go back. I can’t even say goodbye. 

I wrapped a blanket around Pilar, led her to her room, and told her to stick her fingers in her ears to drown out our mother’s wails. She was ten and I was fourteen, so she listened to what I told her, body trembling from the sudden fright that raked her body after our mother’s first wail. 

“What are we going to do, Hector?” Pilar asked me, fingers still in her ears. I shrugged. “Are we going to Mexico?” 

“I don’t know,” I kept repeating, trying to stop my voice from being swallowed by the anxiety that choked my throat. “I don’t know.” 

When I had thought to close her bedroom door, my mother appeared behind me suddenly, palm to her chest, face contorted with a mixture of grief and anger. My heart leapt from my chest  when she began yelling at us—He’s gone! Do you two understand? My father! My father! I can’t go back to see him. 

  I placed Pilar behind me; my arms went back to wrap around her while I took in my mother’s screams. I tried to keep myself still, tried to not let the electric shock buzzing through my blood consume me. But a part of me felt like my grandfather’s death was my fault because of the way my mother was yelling at me. 

I used to think my mother was made of brown marble, face smoothed of any imperfection, but now she was unrecognizable to me, eyes ablaze, her brown hair having lost its luster, and for the first time in years, my mother looked older than what she was. The ache in her heart made the bags under her eyes heavier and deepened the lines in her face. 

My father appeared behind her then, like an apparition, hand clenching her upper arm tightly. 

“Don’t yell,” was all he said, voice serious and clipped as he tugged her away from us. “Don’t yell at them.” 

That seemed to shake something within my mother who finally noticed how much she had frightened us. 

“We can go back to Mexico, Mamá,” I somehow managed to say. “We can go back. We can cross and take the bus—”

“No, Hector.” My father’s voice barrelled through my words. “No we can’t. Or at least, we can’t.” He motioned to him and my mother with a finger. My mother whimpered. My heart continued to break for her. 

I stepped away from Pilar and motioned for her to sit on the edge of the bed. Her movements were methodical, eyes lost on what to focus on in the moment. She had two of her fingers completely wrapped by her other hand—a nervous habit she had developed when she was four. She always did it when she was yelled at. 

My father wrapped his arms around my mother tightly; his head went above hers, hand coming up to rub her hair, soothe all of her worries away. The doorway of Pilar’s bedroom framed them, and I burned the image in my brain. My parents. Together in an embrace. 

“We’re illegal,” my father said, no preamble, no stalling. I sucked in a breath as Pilar looked at me, confusion manifesting in her frown and furrowed eyebrows. 

“That means they have no papers, Pilar,” I explained to her. “That means they can’t go out of the country. That means….” I trailed off, heart in my throat and in pieces. The shards of it scraped my burning throat. I knew what being illegal meant. Laredo, Texas was no stranger to having illegal aliens in its schools, in its workforce, in its malls and parks and crumbling homes. 

“That means we cannot go back to Mexico,” my father finished for me. “It means we all have to be careful.” 

“I thought the word illegal meant it was bad,” Pilar mumbled. Her back was hunched forward, hand still wrapped around her fingers. 

My dad sucked in his bottom lip. “It is bad, mija.” 

“But you are not bad people,” she said. 

My father nodded, eyes becoming glassy. “No. No we aren’t.” 

“I don’t understand.” Pilar turned to me. “Hector, I don’t understand.” 

As I opened my mouth to respond to her my dad spoke—”You will. I will explain everything to you both later, but not now.” His shoulders slumped. “Hector, please clean up the kitchen. Pilar, help your brother.” 

We both mumbled a ‘yes’ as we watched him lead our mother away. The light was gone from both of them. From all of us. 

My mother had burnt the rice. I spent the rest of the evening trying to carefully unstick every piece from the pan—one by one—using only the tips of my fingers so as to not scrape my mother’s favorite pan. My mind reeled with the fact that any move I made in the future could result in their deportation. 

How in the world did my parents remain so steadfast? How desperate were they to come to this country, knowing they could never return to Mexico? Never see their family again? 

I could never do that. I could never live without the support of my parents. I need their presence near me. 

God, what would I do if the border patrol ever came knocking on our doors? 

A few years later, I’m asking that question again, palms cupping the cold water streaming down from the bathroom faucet before splashing it on my face. It’s a question I ask myself before I go to sleep. A question that slips in every single one of my prayers to la Virgen de Guadalupe. 

I stare at my reflection, yellowed by the overhead light, as the droplets bead on my face. The bags under my eyes are dark and heavy. Pilar likes to say that I have the eyes of a melancholic Catholic saint. 

After staring at myself for a few seconds, I leave to straighten out a few things: my school notebook that practically barfed the notes outlining Danny’s and I’s class project;  the Archangel Michael sculpture my dad had gifted me when I was eight; my sister’s stuffed duck. I then  slowly walked to my parents room, counting my steps, fingertips and palms feeling the walls as I navigated through the dark hallway. 

Their door was left ajar. Yellow light sliced the darkness through the gap. Before I entered to wish them goodnight, I saw my father sitting on the bed’s corner, head bent forward, back slouched as my mother rubbed his back slowly. They both faced the window and away from me. 

“You got into an argument?” My mother asks. 

“I didn’t mean to,” my father responds, voice low and deep. “I just got really angry.”

The bed creaks under my father’s weight when he shifts, body unfurling, face coming up to face the heavens. “I just hope he doesn’t know about…” He trails off. “I became upset when he kept nagging me about the truck. I keep it in our space in front of the house—nowhere near his goddamn lawn.” He swallows in air. “Called me a dirty Mexican, stupid son-of-a-bitch, como si él no tuviera el pinche nopalote en la frentonta.” 

I knew my dad was talking about our neighbor Josue. Short, bearded and an absolute nightmare when it came to his property. And the property of others. He had kept nagging my dad about his work truck and how it slightly blocked his route on his way to work because of how it was parked on our sidewalk—half on our property and half on the street. 

But every car in our neighborhood was parked like that, including Josue’s. 

My mother hums and nods. When she looks away from my father’s face, her eyes catch me peeking. I jump slightly, not knowing why. 

“Hector,” she sighs. “Go to sleep, mijo, please.” 

“Okay,” I say. “Goodnight, love you both.” 

My mother gives me a tiny smile, doesn’t even dent her cheeks. My father doesn’t  turn to me at all. Still, he tells me that he loves me. 

I go to sleep that night hugging my sister close to me. Our hearts synched together. She laid next to me in bed just like the previous nights and with the same excuse: she kept having nightmares of all of us being sucked into an endless abyss. Everytime she jumped awake from it, she needed to see me next to her to make sure it wasn’t true. 

 For the first time in a while, I remember that she was thirteen, at the cusp of teenhood. While at seventeen, I was much closer to adulthood than ever before. Her face was no longer round and chubby and lost about the world around her. Now she had eyes with the same curiosity as our mother’s, same tear-drop shape of our fathers.  

 Her labored breathing lulls me, and for a few hours I dream of nothing. 

The schools in Laredo, Texas  always brought in the border patrol for every career day.  All of us would be directed to the gymnasium so that we could see the presentation they had for all of us. They brought their dogs and their guns and their tactical gear and their stupid fucking sunglasses they either kept on or wore behind their shaved heads as though to give the illusion they had eyes there too.

They also always came in threes: an eager-to-prove Mexican American born and raised in our town, a nonchalant black man who looked like he wanted to be somewhere else, and a white guy who just looked plain racist. White guys with shaved heads and tactical gear always looked racist to me. Of course, the trios always varied, but there was always, always an overeager Mexican American. 

As for the presentations, these would rotate between a regular walkthrough of their daily lives where they showed us how each of their equipment is utilized—and if we’re oh so lucky a quick story of when they had to use them—and of course, a segment on  Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, which was always accompanied by a blown out photo of him. In the photo he’s heavily frowning, eyebrow raised as though he was expecting us to answer a question he had posed. “He died protecting all of you from the drugs being smuggled in from the cartels,” one of the agents would say. “So remember to always say no to drugs to honor his legacy!”  

I pitied the poor guy. Even in death he had to serve. 

One presentation that had stuck with me was the one held during my freshman year in high school. The border patrol, dressed in only their green slacks (but still wearing their gun holsters)  had broken everyone into groups and had designated an agent to each to establish a more “intimate and comfortable” setting. I had been stuck with one that I knew was one of those overeager Mexican Americans when they were younger. See, the way one can tell is because of how they looked—tan skin, buzzed head—and how they pronounced the Spanish words—a forced accent—and the very obvious fact that they were only American, never Mexican American. 

As we all sat around on the floor with our legs crossed, he stood over us, hands waving around with every word he said. An air of confidence surrounded him; it was almost like a stormcloud, black and gray.  A kid next to me with a strong jaw looked like he was going to shit himself every time the agent would get close to him and every time they would make eye contact. 

“So we had gotten a tip one Monday morning detailing the whereabouts of cartel members using one of the houses near Chacon Creek—you know the area, right? Yeah, you all do—as a base for their operations.” 

He stopped and steepled his hands. “We had planned to bust it that afternoon, but we realized that the cover of night would have been better. Do you all agree?” 

People gave out a robotic ‘yes’. 

“Yeah you do,” he continued. “My buddies and I are all waiting; everything around us is quiet; all you can hear are the crickets. And then boom!” He makes a kicking motion. A few of the kids jump. The one sitting next to me practically jumps out of his skin. “We bust the door open. That thing flew across the room and before it could even land, my buddies and I were storming in, going through rooms, apprehending everyone in our sights.” He stopped for a few seconds, eyes focusing on something far away within the gymnasium. “We apprehended about 50 members. I will never forget that.” 

He then asked if anyone had any questions and while everyone began to ask if he was nervous, what type of weapons they used or who the members were, I couldn’t help but place my family in that situation. What classified someone as a criminal? What blurred that distinction? 

The story had sizzled every nerve in my body and settled into my bones. I was so anxious that I had bitten the skin off my thumb and pointer fingers.  

I wonder if the school knew they had undocumented students attending these events. Did they know that some of these students had undocumented parents? 

Was this a warning? A cautionary tale? All I knew was that none of us enjoyed these presentations—except for the overeager Mexican Americans, of course.

A girl with big, curly hair and green eyes within the circle had raised their hand. “What about when you’re raiding regular people’s houses?” 

The agent paused for a moment to consider it. “Well, that is obviously very different,” he had said, plastering on a smile. “We have different procedures for that.” 

The girl narrowed her eyes. 

“But we make sure to always tell those captives that they have a few rights in this country,” the agent had said. “We can only enter if we have a warrant, and we make sure to always give a warning before we enter.” 

Unless you are asleep and the agent invading your space is the brother of your neighbor. In this case, no warrant is needed, and no warning is given. 

I hear the wood splinter as the door slams from where it had been ripped from the hinges. I jolt awake, almost crushing my sister in my embrace from the utter shock. 

Pilar gasps awake in my arms. There are screams. Orders. They come from all directions. 

“Hector?” She’s wide awake now, eyes wide, body shaking. “Hector, what is happening?”

I open my mouth to say something, but the ice in my veins freezes me, my chest feels heavy. She shakes my arms off her. There’s a struggle—she’s wrestling and groaning and choking on words  until she deeply inhales to scream at me to react to what is happening. 

“Our parents,” she says as she’s scrambling off the bed on her hands and knees. I lay my head back down on my pillow as I feel the walls shake, hear the sound of heavy boots. I close my eyes, pray that it’s just thunder. That now I’m the one having a nightmare I can wake up from. 

“Hector, get up, please!” Pilar screams. 

I’m in the living room suddenly, not knowing how I got here in the first place. I remember Pilar’s heavy grab, her nails sinking into my skin, remember my palms sliding against the wall to keep me up, remember the rapid beating of my heart. Each beat felt like a puncture and each inhale felt like I was opening up those wounds. 

The living room is dark. Pilar is two steps behind me, trembling furiously in her pajamas. Her feet are bare. Her face frozen in shock at what’s in front of us.

Our parents, faces sweaty, bodies trembling, being manhandled by three border patrol agents. Everything within me freezes quickly—much too quickly, and my breath once again stops. Sound escapes me. Everything becomes muffled. My throat burns. 

All of the agents are tall, or maybe at the moment they seem tall to me in their tactical gear, standing over my parents who are on their knees. My mom has a weak knee, always has a difficult time getting up. Why is she on the ground? 

I’m so incredibly far away from my parents. My dad’s face twists in pain while the agent tells them that struggling will just make the situation worse. He twists my dad’s are some more. My dad groans in pain, tries to curl into himself once more to help the pain subside. But the agent straightens my dad forcefully, yanking so hard my dad’s neck snaps back. 

I step forward without thinking about my next move. 

White streams of light blind me suddenly. A shout is heard. I realize then that I’m being ordered to get down. 

“Listen to what they say, Hector,” my dad tells me as he’s bent down forcefully by the agent twisting his arm. He’s wheezing. “Don’t fight. It’s okay.” 

My heart beats in my ears. Heat consumes my entire face. Rage simmers within me until it forges itself into a more serrated texture and begins to slice through me. Don’t fight? Don’t fight while my parents are on their fucking knees? 

“Do you even have a fucking warrant?” I yell. 

My mom yells at me to stop, but I am solely focused on the agent standing over my father. Buzzed head. Scar running down his eyebrow. And a stupid fucking smirk on his face. If I was a sentimental Mexican, I would have felt some twisted form of camaraderie with him. We share the same roots, same roadmaps on the palms of our hands and the same distinctive features. 

But I am not sentimental and I don’t find camaraderie with pigs. 

I hate him. I want to have him under my heel until he’s nothing but a smear. His bones will be powdered and spread to the wind like seeds for flowers and his blood will fertilize the ground—at least then he could produce something beautiful rather than wretched. 

The agent says nothing to me. His smirk blooms into a grin. 

He twists again and my father’s arm snaps. The sound is loud, and my father’s screech chases after it. 

Pilar yelps. I run towards him.

Fire chases my veins, starting at the heels of my feet, pumping up my thighs until I feel the blaze scorch my throat. 

The agent holding my father doesn’t even stand up, but he shakes his head at my boldness. The one standing next to him—sharp jaw, same buzzed head—steps in between us, palms raised. I think he had said something to me, but everything around me is blurry and red. 

Seeing him enrages me even more. I try to sidestep him, moving to the right and then left. His body jolts with my movements, body tensing as he tells me to stand down. 

When my palms connect to his chest, there’s a rush of blood through my vein that chills and numbs my body. Then, a spark. 

I don’t think he was expecting for his body to hit the wall so forcefully the frames shake and rattle. He chokes on his groan in surprise as he slumps down. When he regains his bearings, palm to his heaving chest, his eyes brim with shock and awe and  anger. I don’t know what he was expecting. I have my dad’s build. I have his ugly attitude. I am everything my dad could have been, would have been, should have been. 

“Hector, stop!” Pilar yells. My parents are screaming at me as well. My mother’s endless shrieks pierce my ears. And for a moment, I freeze. I freeze because I had never heard my mom yell like that: a guttural scream from the deepest depths of her. 

The other agent—green eyes, stocky—meets my eyes in that split second. I could have sworn there was hesitation within the deep lines of his face, swimming in the verdant fields of his eyes. And….if I kept staring a little longer, I could have sworn I had seen him before.

But there was no time to dwell as the subject of my endless hatred rounds on me. His sharp elbow jabs me in the mouth; the pain is as sharp as a whip and it spreads like a rash. I don’t even have time to soothe the pain because suddenly the air in my lungs is forced out when he punches my stomach. One. two. Three times. 

Pilar is behind me once more, arms anchoring me from my elbows. Now there are shouts in all directions.

“Leave them alone!”

“They are just frightened!”

“Gonzalez stand down!”

“Felipe, that's enough. We did not come here to beat on kids.”

But it is all moot when I hear a click and see the barrel of a gun in front of me. My first instinct is to straighten myself out, to not have Pilar desperately try to carry some of my weight in her arms. But nothing is working in my head as the endless void of the barrel seemed to swallow everything in my peripheral vision. 

“I’ve fucking had it with you,” he spits at me. I quickly read his badge: Gonzalez. I make a list of all the Gonzalez’ I know and have met. Their faces flash in my mind like flickering light bulbs, one after the other. What a stupid last name. Such a common name with no real uniqueness or intrigue to it. Just like this stupid fuck in front of me. Resorting to murder has always been the first step for them. The easiest step. And he would get away with it too. Just because he can. Just because they all can. 

What stories would they come up for me and my family once we’re all dead and gone? Would we be another story for them to tell to students? Some twisted badge of honor for them? Another tally for them to brag about? 

My dad roars in frustration as my mother wails. Both are being restrained by the agent I threw against the wall and the green-eyed one. Still, my dad struggles, body writhing, body furling and unfurling, head trying to slam into something. 

My chest is still burning. My stomach aches. My mouth is wet with blood. My front tooth has been chipped and what is now the sharp point of it sits uncomfortably in the soft parts of my mouth. 

I don’t want to cry, and I won’t do it, even as I feel Pilar’s tremble behind me. 

“You’d just be killing a boy,” I tell him. 

He falters. I repeat it again as a whisper this time. 

Then, the green-eyed one is right next to him, heavy hand shoving his shoulder harshly to turn him away from us. “Don’t fucking do this, Felipe. Let’s just take the parents and let’s go.”

That straightens me, but Pilar tightens her hold on me. She slams me against her and places her hand on my mouth to silence me. “Hector, please,” she pleads. “Just, please, stop.” 

Her voice croaks on the last syllable. And like rain, her sobs start out softly—droplets hitting the earth—before I feel her body shake uncontrollably behind me. 

I break. Everything comes crashing down on me then. Everything. The pain I feel both physically and mentally. My baby sister and her nightmares. My dad’s arm. My mom’s knee. Their screams. 

My parents. My parents. My parents.