A Magazine curated by

Blake Abbie: Would you agree that we need to have the darkness to create change?

Paola Ramos: I think so. But as a journalist, I wonder about the breaking point. At what point do people wake up? Purely thinking within the immigration space, there was a breaking point in 2012 when Americans were able to humanise the Dreamers, the undocumented immigrants who came to America as children. In 2018, it was family separation: the sound of babies crying at the border and the idea of a mother and her child being separated — that touched people. So now will it be deportations again? The idea that people are being sent to prison camps in El Salvador? I don’t know.

BA: Maybe it is the fact that people are choosing to leave and not be in this country anymore?

PR: Maybe. That’s profound. It is surreal that the Supreme Court is about to decide whether or not the executive power can revoke birthright citizenship. It’s almost as if we have to be reminded of the darkest tendencies that we have as a country to keep pushing forward. We are capable as a society of everything: we know that we can treat Black and Brown people as inferior or as a separate class. We’re capable of deciding whether or not we want to become a different country. America is more mythical than real.

BA: Well, the myth of the American dream is completely shattered, and the people that chase it are generally the people who are not born in the United States, but who are taught to chase it.

PR: That’s right. You need people to dream, you need their imagination. And no one dreams bigger than those who are told they don’t belong. That is powerful.

I tend to come into these spaces with a pretty dark mindset in terms of the expectations I have of this country right at this point, but then a person like the activist Cristina Jiménez Moreta comes into the conversation. One of the things that I took away from her most recent book, Dreaming of Home, was this idea of how there is so much opportunity in darkness and how people are able to organise and come together when it is least expected. That, to me, was revolutionary because I’m coming from more than six years spent with right-wing extremists, Proud Boys and white supremacists. So to hear her, someone who has been undocumented for so many years and has faced deportation, is a powerful reminder of the opportunities that are among us when you can’t see them.

Yesterday, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was outside two courthouses in New York City. What you don’t see is while they’re doing these raids, there are pastors across the city who are opening their churches for immigrants. Or ordinary New Yorkers who are opening their spaces for people. It’s in these kinds of quiet ways that you have to show up in today’s environment.

BA: Does Cristina speak about her experiences in this present moment?

PR: I think her journey was about letting go of shame as she was extremely scared to come out as undocumented and shed the weight of stereotypes. That actually parallels Willy — they’re both fearless, outspoken, unafraid to push back and challenge the status quo. During the first Trump administration, Willy was putting these subtle political messages on t-shirts. When I came across that, I fell in love with the story of this queer Latino man from California’s Central Valley that managed to break all these stereotypes, rise and be so proud.

BA: What do you mean specifically about stereotypes?

PR: To me, whenever we talk about Latinos or immigrants, we have to think about all the racial baggage and the colonial mindset that we attach to ourselves when we come to this country. We have to be aware of these racial stereotypes that exist in Latin America, because it helps to explain a lot of the anti-Blackness among Latino communities and why there is this sudden increase in anti-immigrant sentiments among us, with someone like Trump getting 45 per cent of the Latino vote. So much of that however has less to do with Trumpism or Latin American politics and more to do with our own history.

I could imagine that for someone such as Willy or myself, who had to come out as queer in these traditional Latino spaces, it is about breaking stereotypes and breaking cultural norms. It’s very heavy. We just never talk about it because in the American context, we’re supposed to be part of this multiracial, multi-ethnic progressive coalition. To see ourselves from a different angle is to counter expectations. For someone like Cristina, it was about letting go of heavy evangelical influences in her family.

At a time when people feel paralysed, we have to think about the way that the undocumented youth used their voices: In the mid-2000s, during the Obama era, young undocumented people showed up and didn’t take no for an answer. They pushed back with massive protests which led to the immigration policy DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) being announced and these Dreamers having more protections. Cristina also insists that we need to be very real about the threat this country is facing — about how dark it is. This is unprecedented. To be living in a democracy that is corroding in a slow way, which is not the way democracies typically fall.

BA: There’s no revolution.

PR: Exactly. It’s a slow death.

BA: You’ve talked before about this idea of sanctuary, in particular for undocumented women in New York, them not knowing what it means to be in a city that formerly has maybe represented a space of safety and freedom, but now they’re questioning their ability to walk freely in the streets.

PR: What you see in New York is happening everywhere across the country, but I do think that it is palpable here. New York is supposed to be a ‘progressive’ sanctuary city, but we now find ourselves trying to define what that means. We’re being tested in a city where Donald Trump made a lot of inroads, even among immigrant communities. But on the flip side, you have people such as this incredible pastor, Juan Carlos Ruiz who is adamant about being in this administration’s face, inviting immigrants into his space and ensuring that they feel like they belong. It’s important. I’ve met Venezuelan asylum seekers that came pre-Trump’s election and who are in limbo now.

BA: Because they still are in the asylum process?

PR: Yes, and they don’t have anywhere else to go. They obviously can’t go back to Venezuela, because they’re fleeing and want to be in the United States. I’ve met some of those families that want to call New York City home, but are still trying to figure out what comes next.

I’ve also met Mexican mixed-status families in Sunset Park that are going to self-deport. This one woman in particular, her mom is undocumented and sick. They are waiting for her to get cancer treatment in the US and will pack their bags once it’s done. She is a Dreamer, part of the movement of young immigrants that were chanting: ‘We’re here to stay, we belong.’ But in our last conversation, she told me that she had been waiting on immigration reform her entire life, and she is tired of waiting and fighting. She has done every possible job in New York City while her mother has been cleaning houses. They have both given everything they have to the city, and I think that it is now a breaking point for them. They wonder what they are getting in return but most importantly what dignity means for them at this point. These people are making profound decisions about where they belong, about what home even is now.

BA: Yes, what does home mean to someone who’s a Dreamer?

PR: She was born abroad, but she’s lived here her whole life. All she knows is the US. I have also met this woman, who self-deported a month ago back to Mexico. She literally packed up her entire house and drove a car from Baltimore to Mexico with her family. Her kids were born in the US. She seems happy and has found safety in the same country she fled from. She told me that she felt as if she was seeing colours in a different way, seeing the brightness of things. I’m obviously not saying that self-deporting is liberating or that it is empowering, but it does pose an interesting question: What is the point at which you let go of these expectations from a country that keeps promising yet letting you down?

I met a group of Venezuelans in a little Panamanian town where people set off in boats to avoid trekking through the jungle as they migrate back south. A lot of these people had been to the US border before Trump was elected and had their CBP One applications, which was what the Biden administration created to speed up the asylum-seeking process. But when Trump took office, he closed all those applications, so many of these people were waiting in limbo.

BA: And they still are now.

PR: Many of them are still at the border in Mexico waiting to cross, but like this group, I met others who self-deported from the interior out of fear.

BA: Is Mexico accepting refugees or asylum seekers?

PR: Technically yes, but there are a lot less. Trump can proudly claim that he has completely dismantled the refugee system along the border. It isn’t what it used to be.

BA: When was the last time you were there?

PR: A year ago. I was doing a story on the rise of sexual violence along the border. Obviously the cartels have always exploited migrants, but there has been an uptick in sexual violence. I spent time with one migrant who had travelled up through Mexico. Her story was horrifying. She was a victim of this emerging pattern of not only sexual violence but rape-related pregnancy. A lot of these migrant women who made it to America with rape-related pregnancies had to go around the system to get their hands on pills to terminate the pregnancy. There is this incredible underground network of women across America who are doing what people have done all their lives: fighting, going around the system and surviving in the ways they can.

This one woman managed to come into the United States during the Biden era, and now she’s in California as an asylum seeker. She just had a baby too, right as the Supreme Court was debating whether or not this administration could revoke birthright citizenship. Obviously, in her case, no matter what happens she will be fine, but it’s heavy.

BA: To escape wherever she was coming from and to have gone through all of that, to be now in a country that is supposed to represent freedom and be met with the idea that the choice of having a child might not be hers.

PR: Exactly. Especially as they’re surrounded by people who look like you that are being racially profiled — ICE going into hospitals, churches and courthouses. It’s a lot. But at the same time, they feel immensely honoured and lucky to be part of this country. There are all these contradicting feelings.

Find Full Conversation In A Magazine Curated By Willy Chavarria