The US government stole my father.
Felicia Swartzenberg
On my 14th birthday, I received a card. Inside was a plea for my forgiveness written in broken English.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading. When I looked at my mom she was smiling through teary eyes.
“It’s okay, it’s real,” she said in response to my disbelief.
When I was a baby my father was deported to Mexico. Fourteen years later, he came back and I finally had a chance to meet him.
Many people underestimate the effect separation has on a child. I’ve heard some suggest children don’t even remember the things you say in front of them until they’re a certain age.
I disagree.
When I read stories about children not recognizing their mothers after being separated at the border, my heart aches. I know a lot of these children will struggle to reconnect with their parents just like I did. Their young minds will be shaped by the trauma of separation. They’re being robbed of the ability to develop those meaningful relationships just like me.
For a few hopeful years after I turned 14, I tried to form a connection with my father. We spoke on the phone, I went to his house for dinners and I met his new family. I tried earnestly to force a father-daughter relationship. But I couldn’t.
I felt uncomfortable around him and his family. He lived in Mexico most of his life. He raised his kids in a Spanish speaking household. I learned about my heritage through textbooks and TV shows.
No matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard he tried, I couldn’t call him dad. I couldn’t form the connection I had been longing for my entire life.
My family would ask me questions and wondered why I didn’t want to talk to him.
“I’m past the time where I need a dad. We’re different people and I don’t need him anymore,” I said, trying to hide my feelings.
The truth was I couldn’t move past thinking he didn’t want me. I resented him and I resented everything that kept us apart.
He was deported the day I was born. The only memory I had of my father was his absence and I couldn’t move past that. My unresolved trauma wouldn’t let me move past that.
When I was a child I thought my father didn’t want me. I liked to pretend it didn’t bother me, but it did. I felt different.
Every time I met a new friend and we would talk about our families.
“Where is your dad?” they would ask.
“I don’t have a dad,” I would reply.
I always got a barrage of insensitive questions. Kids don’t know any better.
The most common one: “You can’t not have a dad. Is he dead?”
It was a difficult question to answer. At times, I wasn’t even sure. No one ever talked about him.
Before I understood immigration law, I thought he left because he wasn’t ready for the responsibilities of fatherhood. I thought I was a burden he didn’t want to carry. Now, I know the American government stole him from me.
He was undocumented, but he was not “illegal.” It should not be a crime to move to a new country and earn an honest living.
He never committed a crime. He was working in a field when immigration enforcement got a tip about undocumented farm workers. Some of his friends got away. He couldn’t run fast enough.
Immigration law made my father a stranger. I never made a relationship with him when I was young, and now it feels unnatural.
Therapy didn’t help. Forcing myself to bond with him didn’t help. Nothing has. The ache simply dulled over time.
In a few years, when the children caught in this immigration nonsense mature, I’m sure more stories similar to mine will arise; the only difference being the children are being taken, not the parent.
When you take a parent from a child, they are too young to know the larger constructs at play. They don’t understand the concept of immigration law. They will only understand the absence of their loved one, and some may never recover.