Introduction | Part 1: Javier | Part 2: Raul

August 2009

The cop approaches Javier’s car. He’s sheer bulk confined in a brown uniform.

Javier is sick with fear. How could he have missed the speed trap? He knows what’s at stake. He’s 19 years old, a freshman from Kansas City, Kan., but he’s also here illegally, undocumented. If this cop finds out his secret, Javier could be arrested and shipped back to Mexico, a country he hasn’t seen since he was 5 years old.

Javier, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, frantically plans what he’ll say as he watches the cop draw nearer in the rearview mirror. He steps closer to the black VW Golf and gazes in at Javier.

“License and registration?”

Javier feels his hands trembling. He has no license because he is undocumented. On paper, he doesn’t exist. He tries to play it cool and hands the officer his registration and insurance.

“And your license?” the officer says.

Javier tries to calm his voice as he tells the cop what he will discover anyway.

“I don’t have one.”

And then the lie.

“I never got around to it.”

The officer asks for some form of ID. Javier hands him his KU ID, newly printed at orientation. The officer stares at it. Javier holds his breath.

“You’d better call someone to pick you up.”

The cop walks away, Javier’s ID in hand. Relief floods over him. His dream is still alive.

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Raul stumbles out of the bus and onto the asphalt. His bruised wrists ache from being handcuffed to another man during the long journey from the jail in Missouri where he was detained.

Guards with guns drawn toss the men’s belongings to the ground in plastic trash bags. Raul scrambles for his Bible, drawings of his godson and his $40 prison check, his parting gift from the U.S. government to start a new life in Mexico.

It is a year and a half and 750 miles from Raul’s 2007 graduation from the University. In that faraway life, he was the radiant example of success against all odds — a student senator, the first in his family to earn a college degree. Even now, as Raul stands at the Mexican border, his face beams from the Latino recruitment poster used by KU Admissions. On the poster, he is pictured below text in Spanish that reads: You Have a Home Here.

Then-Provost Richard Lariviere delivered an impassioned speech for diversity, using Raul’s story as a shining example: how he came from a poor family and worked full time to both support them and pay for his education, earning a degree in psychology.

“We must repeat his story thousands of times,” Lariviere told faculty.

Lariviere and those who heard that speech didn’t know that Raul, who came to the United States with his family in search of the American dream, was undocumented.

That dream crumbled into a nightmare only a year and a half after he walked down the hill at graduation. This time, he would walk across a bridge over the Rio Grande to another country and another life.

For Raul, life in limbo had ended.

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Each year, more than 65,000 undocumented students like Javier and Raul graduate from high schools in the United States. These students live in limbo: They grow up American, yet are not legal residents.

In Kansas, undocumented students can go to college. But in some states, including Missouri, it is illegal to attend public universities. Undocumented students can’t get Social Security numbers to work legally, driver’s licenses or college scholarships. They live in constant fear of deportation to countries that they don’t remember.And if they are deported, it is almost impossible to get a visa to return.

For students like Javier, living in limbo means that any at second, life as he knows it could be snatched away, as when Raul was sent back to Mexico.

“I was born there, but it’s not my home,” Javier said.

Introduction | Part 1: Javier | Part 2: Raul

— Edited by Lauren Keith