{"id":136684,"date":"2016-03-17T09:11:10","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T15:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=136684"},"modified":"2017-01-10T06:48:40","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T13:48:40","slug":"immigration-saga-leaves-teen-trapped-in-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/03\/immigration-saga-leaves-teen-trapped-in-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigration saga leaves teen trapped in Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_136689\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-136689\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/MHN_TTBORDER_034_jpg_800x1000_q100-771x515.jpg\" alt=\"Marcus Francisco Valencia Rodriguez\" width=\"771\" height=\"515\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/MHN_TTBORDER_034_jpg_800x1000_q100-771x515.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/MHN_TTBORDER_034_jpg_800x1000_q100-336x224.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/MHN_TTBORDER_034_jpg_800x1000_q100-768x513.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/MHN_TTBORDER_034_jpg_800x1000_q100.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Martin do Nascimento \/ The Texas Tribune<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marcus Francisco Valencia Rodriguez, 19 years old, in the courtyard at the Casa del Migrante migrant shleter in Matamoros, Mexico, on Nov. 2, 2015.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>MATAMOROS, Mexico \u2014 Marcos Valencia is a stranger in the country of his birth. The stocky 19-year-old\u00a0struggles with Spanish, doesn\u2019t know a thing about Mexican history and can\u2019t find a job.<\/p>\n<p>He spends his days dreaming of going home to Indiana, where he grew up from age three. But\u00a0in the eyes of the law, his home is the cartel-infested state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, where he was born.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article originally appeared in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2016\/03\/10\/family-issues-leave-teen-trapped-mexico\" target=\"_blank\">The Texas Tribune<\/a>,\u00a0a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans and engages with them about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. It\u2019s part of the news organization\u2019s \u201cBorder on Insecurity\u201d series.\u00a0The Texas Tribune is taking a yearlong look at the issues of border security and immigration, reporting on the reality and rhetoric around these topics. <a href=\"http:\/\/apps.texastribune.org\/bordering-on-insecurity\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up to get<\/a> story alerts.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Two and a half years ago, Valencia was living the life of a typical American teenager \u2014 a junior at Goshen High School in Elkhart County, Indiana, where he ran track and dreamed of joining the U.S. Marines or the local police force.<\/p>\n<p>Then one day in May 2013 his sister called the police after finding their stepfather, a Mexican national with a previous conviction for document fraud, physically abusing their mother, Valencia said.<\/p>\n<p>Court records show the stepfather\u00a0was arrested on domestic violence charges, which included a prior offense and felony abuse committed in the presence of a child under the age of 16.\u00a0Records indicate he was deported shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n<p>His mother spent all their money in a failed attempt to rescue her husband from deportation, Valencia said, and when that failed, she took her five\u00a0children to Mexico. Now, stuck in Mexico, Valencia regrets ever agreeing to follow her.<\/p>\n<p>Had he\u00a0stayed in Indiana and finished high school, today he would be eligible for a\u00a0deferred action program President Obama created by executive\u00a0order in 2012 that allows some youths brought to the country illegally to remain here and receive work authorization.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he\u2019s struggling to learn the customs of a country he only knew in pictures before getting trapped here.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rRhdewFYaHU\" width=\"636\" height=\"358\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don&#8217;t know my language. I don&#8217;t know my history. I found out my whole name when I came here. My whole name is Marcos Francisco Valencia Ruiz. Over there I only use Marcos Valencia,\u201d Valencia said in a November interview. \u201cHere I found out my birthday is the independence day of Mexico, which was surprising that I didn&#8217;t even know that. I&#8217;ve tried so hard to get jobs and I&#8217;ve tried to be, to live like an adult. It&#8217;s hard, man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Valencia\u00a0was brought to the United States by his mother, who married American truck driver Daniel Hamby when Valencia was a toddler. Hamby\u00a0acted as his father during his formative years. Two half sisters, Hamby\u2019s daughters, are American citizens living in Indiana. Valencia said Hamby and his mother split up when he was about six or seven, and his mom later re-married.<\/p>\n<p>Valencia doesn\u2019t know his biological father or, at this point, the whereabouts of his mother or deported Mexican stepfather.<\/p>\n<p>But he stays in touch with Hamby, who mostly raised him and who made the trek down to Matamoros to visit Valencia in early November, bringing him some money and clothes but little hope for a quick fix to his immigration woes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are talking to some lawyers up north,\u201d Hamby said in an interview conducted about 100 yards from the banks of the Rio Grande. \u201cWe are just trying to get, trying to get the paperwork rolling.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The first step is to get Valencia\u00a0a Mexican passport, but it\u2019s taking more time and money than planned. Lawyers have told Hamby\u00a0it could take years to get Valencia\u00a0back to the country where he was raised. They\u2019re\u00a0even exploring the possibility of immigration to Canada for Valencia, where he wouldn\u2019t be so far from home.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cSince day one, dealing with immigration has been biggest nightmare I have ever seen in my life,\u201d Hamby said. \u201cIt is so unorganized, and so many hoops that they make you jump through.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hamby said he has no doubt that his former stepson, regardless of what papers he holds, belongs in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat boy is American,\u201d Hamby said. \u201cHe ain\u2019t no Mexican. He looks Mexican, but he is American, trust me. He was raised up there since he was three. He is an American child, that is all there is to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When he returned\u00a0to Mexico, Valencia initially lived near the city of his birth, Altamira, about 300 miles south of Brownsville, Texas. He said the drug traffickers didn\u2019t mess with him because he worked for his uncle, a cell phone repairman.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere&#8217;s no police officers, no civil protection. There&#8217;s military, just military passing by. They sometimes pass in the town, but in the town there&#8217;s a cartel coming by every day just like normal,\u201d Valencia said. \u201cThey don&#8217;t mess with me because I&#8217;m my uncle&#8217;s nephew. They won&#8217;t bother my uncle because he fixes their phones.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In October he went to Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, with the hope of finding \u201ca way out.\u201d But being within a stone\u2019s throw of the United States geographically didn\u2019t get him any closer legally. With nowhere to stay, Valencia ended up asking for help near the bridge and wound up in a migrant shelter.<\/p>\n<p>The director of the shelter said people who stay there aren\u2019t immune from the looming presence of drug cartels, either: Sometimes, cartel members show up at the shelter looking for particular migrants.<\/p>\n<p>In November, Valencia left the border to look for work in Mexico City, but he has since returned to Tamaulipas, where he works 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, repairing phones and computers for his uncle. The one constant in his life is confusion about his own identity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know what to call me,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m a man without a country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marcos Valencia spends his days dreaming of going home to Indiana, where he grew up from age three. But in the eyes of the law, his home is the cartel-infested state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, where he was born.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[140,3331,236,116],"class_list":["post-136684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-bordering-on-insecurity","tag-mexico","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}