She Protected Him When He Decided to Self-Deport

Sasha - on white privilege, a midnight text, and the goodbye she didn't get to say

What you are about to read is an excerpt from WOMN, the interior experience and emotional truths of the women of Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge, holding the grief, the rage, the tenderness, and the fierce love that women know so well.

If you see yourself in these pages,
Pass it to the woman next to you.

This is a scene from the chapter about OWLs (old white ladies) and how we embraced our white privilege as a super power during the surge. I hope you enjoy.

Sasha

I’m gonna self-deport. Can you take me to the airport?

It’s after midnight, Sasha’s text notification wakes her, and when she sees what it says and who it’s from, she taps back a response immediately.

Yup, absolutely, I can do that.

She tries to roll over and go back to sleep, but her foot starts quivering again. She rolls over to the other side and takes three slow deep breaths.

It doesn’t work. She knows sleep won’t be happening tonight. So she sits up in bed and stares at the two messages on her screen.

Her foot quivering habit had started six months earlier, back in July when she had received another text from Rafael.

They’re gone. –he wrote

??? –she replied

ICE. –he answered.

She adjusts the pillow behind her back and scrolls quickly through the six months of text exchanges she had with Rafael, looking for the thread from that day. But that was it, just three lines.

She hadn’t replied in text, she called him.

Her eyes froze on the word “ICE” as her body recalled the feelings of that day.

ICE had broken down the door to the apartment at 6am and took Miguel, his two brothers, and his nephew. The four men who had been getting ready for work were taken, but Rafael, Miguel’s brother-in-law, had left for work early that day. He returned to find their phones, their IDs, and an uneaten bowl of breakfast cereal on the kitchen counter.

When’s your flight?

After she has his itinerary, Sasha opens her Delta app and buys a ticket to Fargo with her SkyMiles so that she can go through security with him and make sure he gets on the plane safely. She’s heard that ICE is stationed inside MSP, beyond the security checkpoints. If she’s lucky, she can cancel the flight last minute and get her SkyMiles refunded.

I can’t really live with myself if I just let him go through when I can just risk losing some SkyMiles.

Miguel had spent a month at the detention center in Albert Lea. Sasha had tried to visit him there, but ICE wouldn’t let her in. When they were finally deported and made it back to their hometown in Mexico, they looked like different people. Miguel had lost so much weight that his face looked like it belonged to someone older, someone who had been sick for a very long time.

For sixteen years, Miguel had lived in the U.S. and sent money back to his family in Mexico, enough to purchase his own home there. But when he got back, he slept on a mattress on the floor of his sister’s house, curled into a corner like a child. He couldn’t be alone.

When his sister’s cat jumped onto the mattress, Miguel woke up screaming, thinking ICE was back, because the last time he’d been abruptly woken from sleep, it was to a gun pointed in his face.

Now, six months and two visits to Mexico later, Sasha sits with her back against the headboard of her bed with her foot quivering under the covers. She and Sleep hadn’t been on the best of terms for months, but since the surge, they’d had all out arguments for most of the night every night.

Thursday morning at 5:30 AM, Sasha pulls up to the house where Rafael has been staying. It’s Minnesota winter dark.

She stares at the bare oak tree in the front yard. The last time Rafael was outside was when the tree had all its leaves. For a moment, Sasha was consumed with guilt. She could go to the store. She could go to the movies. She could walk her dog at 7pm in the dark and the worst thing that would happen was that her fingers would get cold. These were small ordinary things that everyone should be able to do anytime.

This shouldn’t be happening, she thinks, her hands on the wheel. He should be able to just — go outside. He should be able to stay and live a normal life.

Rafael gets in the car with one small duffle bag.

Thirty minutes later, they are in line for TSA. Sasha goes first.

“Good morning,” the officer at the facial scanner says, with an easy early morning tone, “Where you headed today?”

“Fargo,” she says.

“Fargo! Brave woman in January.” He says, glancing at his screen and waving her through.

Rafael steps up to the scanner, nervous and shy. The same officer looks at him, but his face isn’t friendly anymore. He was stern and sharp.

“Look straight ahead.”

Rafael looks at Sasha, unsure.

“Straight ahead!” The officer points two fingers at his own eyes, then jabs them toward the scanner. “Right there.”

“Sir.” The TSA agent is irritated now, “Hold still.”

Rafael doesn’t move as Sasha stands frozen waiting for him, bag straps in both hands.

Do I say something? she thinks. They’re not even trying to hide it, treating him completely differently than me. . . . Don’t. Don’t make it worse.

He finally finds the right angle and the scanner beeps. The officer looks at his screen, says nothing, and motions his head toward the belt.

Sasha smiles tightly and beckons Rafael towards her. He shoves his wallet back into his pocket and follows her. They don’t talk about it. They just start walking toward the gates, side by side.

As they turn the corner to enter the concourse, they pass a Starbucks with a large cluster of about twelve men standing around with their arms crossed, watching the people coming from the security checkpoints. Every single traveler around them had a winter jacket, a scarf, or a puffy coat of some type. It was January in Minnesota. You don’t leave the house without one. But these men were in Carhartts. They were not travelers, and they were not airport security.

Sasha elbows Rafael and urges him to walk faster.

ICE - she thinks, feeling the thought stuck in her mouth.

They keep walking. Same pace. Eyes forward.

Part of her wants to walk right up to them and yell at them like the people at Whipple do. Part of her wants to run. Part of her wants to grab Rafael’s arm as her protector, or maybe as his protector. She just wanted to do something. But there was nothing to do but walk normally toward their gate, two people with boarding passes, nothing to see here.

The gate is quiet. For a little while it almost feels ordinary — two people in airport chairs, the low roar of the terminal around them, a flight board blinking overhead.

When Rafael FaceTimes his wife to let her know he’s at the gate, Sasha walks to the windows to give him some privacy. Rafael hadn’t seen his wife, Miguel’s sister, in three years. She puts her hand up on the window and feels the coldness underneath her fingertips. Would Miguel be able to come back in three years time?

After he finishes his call, he checks-in with the gate agent to make sure the flight is on time. Everything’s fine.

Everything’s fine. But everything is most certainly not fine.

Sasha thinks as she takes a seat next to him again. She can’t settle. She keeps watching for the Carhartt guys.

He has his papers. He is choosing to leave. Everything’s fine.

At 8:25, five minutes before boarding, the gate agent calls Rafael’s name over the PA.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Sasha offers.

He shakes his head. “No, I got it.”

As Sasha watches him walk toward the gate agent, the world starts moving in fast forward. Two Carhartts materialize at the gate. They say something to Rafael. He says something back, reaching into his pocket. When Sasha stands up to walk towards them, they grab him by the arms. Rafael looks at Sasha and shrugs his shoulders and waves as best he can as they lead him to the jetway.

I didn’t get to say goodbye.

When she can’t see him anymore, time slows to a crawl.

After two minutes, she goes to the gate agent.

“Do you know where they are taking him?”

“Oh,” the gate agent says without looking at her, “ICE took him.”

“Where? Am I going to see him again?”

“Aren’t you on this flight?”

“No.”

Sasha goes back to the window and puts her left hand back up on the cold glass and stares out into the white nothingness of Minnesota winter. Eventually the Carhartts come back off the jetway. They got their self-deportation credit so that they could get their money.

Just then, her phone dings. It’s Rafael.

I’m okay. Headed home.

She takes her hand off the glass and looks down at her left hand. It’s shaking just like her feet do at night. So she plays with the imaginary ring that she knows will be there on her next visit to Mexico.

This is an excerpt from WOMN- a book about the women of Minnesota and what Operation Metro Surge made of us.

It’s a mutual aid effort — written by us, for us, moving hand to hand the way love does when it’s real. New excerpts will be released as I write them, every Tuesday, here on Fierce Love. When the manuscript is complete, I plan to release it the grassroots way. Self-published, and supported by grief at grounding community gathering events and independent bookstores.

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I love you fiercely,

TeriLeigh 💜