My name is Victor Valdez, and I chose to self-deport from the United States.
My story reflects a strange and painful reality created by decades of immigration policy, bureaucracy, and human error.
The following is a brief account of my particular experience being an illegal alien raised and integrated fully into American society since the age of four. These accounts are given to the best of my knowledge and memory.
I was born in what is now the city of Cuernavaca, in the Mexican state of Morelos, about 54 miles (or a 1.5-hour drive) south of Mexico City. Although there was no formal documentation at the time, my official date of birth is recorded as Sunday, March 1, 1981. I have no documented information about my birth parents or family background.
I was adopted through a verbal, informal “handshake” agreement when I was still a toddler. My adopted grandfather, Juan Magaña, who was the father of my adopted mother (Carmen), arranged to have me taken to Mexico City in the Delegation of Iztapalapa on the Southern edge of the city in the neighborhood of Vicente Guerrero.
I remember my adopted mother, whom I will refer to simply as my mom, was already living in Chicago with my father, Ricardo. From what I was told, my mom had trouble conceiving and my above-average intellect and my mom’s yearning to have a child were the deciding factors when it came to my adoption.
In 1985, my adopted parents bought me a plane ticket to join them in the South Side of Chicago using a friend of the family’s son’s American birth certificate. It was not long after that President Ronald Reagan signed the “Amnesty Act of 1986.” Due to my sister’s birthright citizenship, my parents were able to obtain permanent residency in the United States.
I made it my personal obsession to learn English to a level that would be equivalent to native speakers. The fact that we moved to a new place every year, for the most part, was another hurdle to overcome.
During this time, my mom had already obtained her citizenship and my dad had obtained his as soon as he was eligible in the 1990’s. It was early in July of 1992, right before Independence Day, that my Mom decided to fly with me back to Mexico. Since she was using the same birth certificate she used to smuggle me in the first time, I had to play the role of her nephew during our trip.
Once there, she left me under the care of my grandmother (her mom). There was a bit of a conundrum when it came to registering me for school. My legal name in Mexico was Victor Alonso Delgado Magaña but, in Chicago, I was Victor A. Valdez. The Mexican education system thus refused to acknowledge my American education, and I had to start school from kindergarten, “Billy Madison” style.
My mom and grandmother took me to several government buildings in Mexico City and were able to produce some sort of proof that I was originally from Mexico. The document is known as “Acta de Registro Civil.” It is a sort of birth certificate and, from what I gather, was a way to formally be entered into the system if you were born in a place that didn’t have medical staff or a small remote area that didn’t document said event.
However, I never ended up attending school in Mexico. What little education I got was through history worksheets that my Uncle Carlos would procure for me at a local office supply store. I had another uncle, Gabriel, who was a truck driver at the time. Since I wasn’t in school, he took me with him on his travels all over Mexico. I got to travel a good portion of the country.
Around February of 1993, my mom decided to bring me back to the United States. I was once again brought over illegally with the same borrowed birth certificate. I never knew what became of the paperwork that she arranged for me in Mexico. What I do know is, once everything was digitized in the Mexican government, I was never officially entered into the system.
My mom got divorced and my adopted father and I became distant. He mainly focused on my sister. By the time I was in high school, my mom remarried a gentleman by the name of Abel Vazquez and began the process of petitioning for both mine and his permanent residency. Due to a couple of small misdemeanors from his youth, Abel was granted temporary citizenship. I, on the other hand, was a good student and a leader in my church and local community. I was granted permanent residency. We were both interviewed back-to-back on the same day.
Not long after, my mom was diagnosed with “single large cell non-Hodgkins lymphoma.” I had recently turned seventeen years old. She passed away in late October of 1998.
Since I was the most qualified to translate for her and was also the most responsible member of our household at the time, I took it upon myself to tend to all of my family’s responsibilities. It was very common for me to be up from Thursday mornings into Sunday evenings.
When my mom passed, we held two wakes for her — one at our local church in Palatine, Illinois, and the other in a small funeral parlor on Armitage and Spaulding Ave in Chicago. I barely made it to the DOJ building on Nov. 3, four days after her passing, where I was able to get my passport stamped so I could fly back to bury my mom in Mexico City. It was my first time legally leaving and reentering the U.S. The second time would be a brief trip to Juarez in the summer of 1999.
It was the last time I left the United States or stepped foot on Mexican soil up until my recent self-deportation.
In 2003, I went to the immigration office again in Chicago so that I could file for citizenship. When my number was called, an official told me that I had actually been granted temporary residency rather than the permanent residency I was previously promised — though I had a letter stating otherwise. Technically, this meant I had overstayed my visa by four years.