I have not seen my husband in over a year. Because of a brain tumor and the pandemic, I’m not even sure when I’ll see him again.
In November 2013 I stood in front of a bus at Broadview Detention Center with seventy-five other people and tried to stop my husband’s deportation. I am a U.S. citizen, and I had no idea what would come next. All I knew was that my government was deporting the love of my life, and our family did not deserve this.
My husband and children’s father, Brígido Acosta-Luis, is one of the 2 million people deported by the Obama-Biden administration. As Vice President Joe Biden prepares to ask us for our vote this November, I want to know what he would do to bring my husband home.
I’ll never forget that day. Students, community members, and relatives of the people on the bus chained ourselves together and tried to block it from moving forward, taking our lives with it. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actually called four SWAT teams from different suburbs to remove us, so that the deportations could continue. The driver was inches from running over one of the protestors. We chanted, we yelled, we tried everything. We spoke to the people on the bus through bullhorns and tears, and I told my husband that I loved him and I would never stop fighting to bring him home.
Later that night, Brigido was dropped off in Mexico, in the same pajamas he wore when ICE arrested him at our home just weeks before. When we finally spoke over the phone, he told me that they could see us from inside the bus, but they could not hear us. The officers blasted the air conditioning to drown us out, and you have to keep in mind that this is Chicago. It was about 32 degrees outside, and they blasted the air conditioning. A lot of the men didn’t have jackets or sweaters, they were just in t-shirts, and they were shackled, hand to foot. The bus drove off and then our loved ones were discarded in Mexico, like pieces of trash. Our most treasured relationships, gone just like that.
A lot has been said about President Trump’s heartless deportations and family separations. It’s true. And deportation is an extreme consequence for a paperwork problem. But deportations didn’t start with President Trump. My family is proof of that. A year after Brigido’s deportation, President Obama changed his immigration policies so that people like my husband, with U.S. citizen children, were no longer considered “priorities” for deportation. But the change came too late for us, and to this day, we remain separated by a border.
That’s why I am calling on Vice President Biden to do what Presidents Obama and Trump did not, and commit to bringing my husband home.
In June Biden tweeted “Children should be released from ICE detention with their parents immediately. This is pretty simple, and I can't believe I have to say it: Families belong together.” I can’t believe it has to be said, either. My family belongs together, too.
Since Brigido was deported, our family of four has been through so much. There were so many times we needed him by our sides, and a yearly trip to Mexico or a Skype call is simply never enough. After Brigido’s deportation, our teenage daughter became depressed, turned to self-harm, and was hospitalized. We lost our business and our home. Our son, only three years old at the time of his father’s deportation, developed severe anxiety and started wetting the bed. Xavier doesn’t understand why his father isn’t allowed to be in the country where the rest of us were born.
Now, seven years into our family nightmare, the pain of separation has not ceased but multiplied. Recently, I developed a brain tumor that required surgery. Like everything, Brigido and I went through this traumatic chapter physically apart, attempting to be a family and comfort each other despite a separation of hundreds of miles.
Living like this is physically, emotionally, and financially draining. And it doesn’t have to be this way. There are ways that my husband could return to the U.S. and be with us, if our leaders had the political will to allow it. I want to know if candidate Biden sees my family’s separation too and, if elected, whether he will use his power to bring my husband home.
Because families do belong together. Including mine.
Maria Paz Perez is a wife, mother, and fighter in Schaumburg, IL who will never give up on reuniting her family.