Photographs by Natalie KeyssarThe Cruz family was exhausted. It was two days before Christmas 2024, and Rachel was coughing from bronchitis, her body once again crashing into the holiday break as she finished her 17th year teaching public high school in New York City. Irvi, her husband, was sleeping after his day shift at an upscale bistro on the Upper West Side, which had followed an overnight shift at a Latin dance club farther uptown, in Inwood. Between the two jobs, he’d dropped their daughters—Sara, 12, and Ana, 10—at their schools for gifted students, then rushed home to the Bronx to cook and do laundry.For years, Rachel and Irvi had been hustling to make this routine work, hoping that American immigration policy would evolve and allow Irvi, who had spent half his life in the United States, to become a citizen. Raising two children in New York City was expensive. Each day felt like a marathon they didn’t think they could finish. But the girls were thriving, and Rachel and Irvi were beloved at work. Every few years, they met with lawyers who urged them to hang on, so they did.I met the Cruz family in late 2016, when Donald Trump’s election, and his contempt for immigrants, first made them think of moving to Irvi’s hometown, in rural southern Mexico. But their daughters were just 2 and 4 then, and uprooting them was daunting. Four years later, Joe Biden’s win made the Trump years seem like an aberration, and Rachel and Irvi thought, once again, that a solution to their problem was within reach. Then came 2024, when 77.3 million Americans voted for Trump. His campaign signs had called for MASS DEPORTATION NOW! To the Cruzes, the message was clear: Irvi should give up and go home.The family had never been apart for long. The four of them linked arms or held hands when they walked down the street together, without seeming to notice they were doing it. Separation was not an option. So they would go, all of them.“We no longer have the faith that things will always be better here in the United States,” Rachel told me that night in December, sitting at their dining table, cupping a Zabar’s mug full of tea.[From the September 2022 issue: Caitlin Dickerson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning story about the secret history of family separation]Drained from work, Irvi shuffled down the stairs in sweatpants.… [TheTopNews] Read More.
2 weeks ago
