The election through undocumented eyes
“I don’t speak out to push a person towards one candidate or the other,” David Calderón said. “I speak out because it’s part of humanity. I tell my story because change does not occur in the mind unless it occurs in the heart first.”
Calderón is a sophomore secondary education major at Grand View University. Calderón, his two sisters and parents are originally from Santa Ana, El Salvador. Due to gang violence and the aftermath of their civil war, the family made the journey to the United States. With the presidential election coming up, it is a nerve-wracking time for the Calderón family.
El Salvador was involved in a civil war (1980–1990) due to unfair treatment of the working people.The land of El Salvador was owned
by 14 different families that ran the plantation production and the government. In the ’90s an agricultural reform was passed to end the war.
After the treaty was passed, the land was given back to the working 7 people. Calderón’s father was a lawyer in El Salvador during this time. His job was to redistribute the land to the people. The families were involved in gang violence, so they had gangs target Calderón’s father and everyone else who worked to redistribute the land. Multiple times, the gang members tried to assassinate Calderón’s father.
“They said the next time that they tried to kill my father that they would also go after his family and make sure that they were successful,” Calderón said.
Gang violence has always been an issue in El Salvador. The Calderón’s neighbor was shot nine times because he was texting the gang leader’s ex- girlfriend. At age 11, boys are at risk of getting jumped by gang members, which then means that they are members of that gang. Before they left, Calderón’s sister was getting close to her preteen years, which meant that she was vulnerable to becoming a sex slave for those gangs. The community they lived in had been safe for many years, but it started getting worse before they left.
Photo by Meghan Gerke
With their family being threatened and the gang violence getting worse, the Calderóns knew it was time to leave. It was dangerous, but they were ready to start their journey to the United States.
In 2004, El Salvador experienced an earthquake. After the earthquake, the United States created a system that allowed Salvadorians to stay in the U.S. temporarily. At the same time, Calderón’s aunt and uncle obtained vacation visas and went to the United States. They ended up overstaying their time and made Des Moines their home. This was an advantage for the Calderón family because they knew someone and had a destination in place as they escaped their country.
The Calderóns began by obtaining a vacation visa to Mexico. To trick
the immigration offices, Calderón’s aunt sent money to their Salvadorian savings accounts to prove that they had a reason to come back to their home country. The first stop of their journey was in Guatemala to say goodbye to his father’s sister because they knew they might not get to see her again.
Their next stop was in Guerrero, Mexico, home to Calderón’s aunt and uncle; here they spent the next month and a half. Officials in Mexico were just as thorough as officials in the United States when it came to interrogation. The Calderón family had to learn the Hispanic customs so they did not stand out when they were questioned.
“I remember not wanting to change because I didn’t want to lose that part of myself,” Calderón said. “I felt like they were trying to strip me of my identity.”
After a month and a half transforming themselves, they left with a coyotaje, which is a group of people who help guide immigrants across
the border. The coyotaje helped the Calderón family and 40 other people through the desert. They left their home in Mexico on April 17, 2005, which was Calderón’s father’s birthday. The family took multiple buses and stayed in several hotels. Eventually they arrived at the border. The last night before going into the desert, their entire group stayed in a house together.
After that night, the group loaded up into vans and went to the edge
of the Mexican territory. They spent three days and two nights in the Sonoran Desert. At the time, his sister Fatima was 6, Calderón was 9, and his other sister, Kenia was 11. They walked during the night and rested during the day.
“I remember the first night was so different,” Calderón said. “I think I was just trying to think about all the positives that I could. I tried to think of it as another adventure, but it was very scary.”
Within the first night, they lost Calderón’s mother two different times when they were running for cover. This made the situation even more traumatizing because Calderón and his siblings had never been separated from their mother before.
Photo by Meghan Gerke
On the second night, Calderón’s father’s knee gave out. It came to a point where he couldn’t take the pain anymore. At one point, the whole group stopped and gathered around him because he kept saying things like, “This is it. You’ll have to go on without me.”
“I watched my 6-year-old sister kneel down and say a prayer,” Calderón said. “She then grabbed him by the hand and basically pulled a grown man for two more days. She never let go of his hand. I still think that is the most powerful thing that I have ever seen. It really put into context what was actually happening. Our lives were no longer in our hands.”
On the third night, they didn’t stop walking, and this time both
of Calderón’s parents were able to keep up. The group finally made it to the highway in Arizona at about 3 a.m. There, people working with the coyotaje picked them up in a small car similar to a Honda Civic. All of the seats were taken out except the driver’s seat. People within the group literally piled in the car, lying on top of each other. They were only allowed to pile up to the window level just in case another car pulled up and the people looked inside.
Two days later, Calderón’s uncle picked up their family from a house they were staying in and drove them up to Des Moines. They arrived in Des Moines on April 27, marking the end of a 10-day journey. It was also his mother’s birthday.
The Calderón family arrived safely and have now settled and made it their home. However, they are still undocumented immigrants.
In 2012, President Obama passed a policy called the Deffered Action for Childhood Arrival Act (DACA.) This action allows certain undocumented immigrants in the United States who entered the country before their 16th birthday and before June 2007 to receive a renewable two-year work permit and exemption from deportation. It confers non-immigrant legal status but does not provide a path to citizenship.
Hillary Clinton has announced that if she is elected president, she
will support the DACA policy. She plans to do all she can under the
law to protect these families. If Congress continues to fail to act on comprehensive immigration reform, she has vowed to enact a simple system for some families. She will enforce the immigration law.
Donald Trump has a plan to deport all undocumented people back to their countries. He says he would take away the DACA policy, and Calderón and many other individuals around his
age would lose their legalization. By putting an end to the act and stripping people of their work visas, it would also put a red flag on their names since they are already in the system as undocumented.
Photo by Meghan Gerke
“To hear Trump talk about how we all need to go back and find the right way here and then continue to say we don’t belong here, that’s racist,” Calderón said. “Why aren’t our lives worth it just because we don’t have that piece of paper?”
If Trump is elected, families like the Calderóns could likely lose everything. All relationships that they have built will be broken if they get deported. Any accomplishments that they have made won’t matter because they will not be able to stay in the United States. They could lose their livelihood.
After high school, Calderón had no other option besides working because he couldn’t come up with the funds to pay for college. Then Grand View University selected Calderón to receive their Iowa Immigrant Scholarship. By receiving the scholarship, Calderón has been able to develop dreams for his future, but they could all be taken away if Trump is elected.
“By watching the debates and hearing him speak, you can tell that Trump is uneducated in politics and just doesn’t have any class,” Calderón said.
Since the Calderón family as well as other undocumented immigrants are unable to vote, Calderón and his older sister, Kenia, are active in sharing their family’s story.
By going out and telling people their story face-to-face, Calderón and his sister realize that they make better connections. They don’t hold back any detail when telling people because they want everyone to realize the reality of what their family and everyone else has to go through. Calderón said that telling their story makes people think about what their perspective is and how these changes could affect them.
“Though my story is powerful ,and I have gone through a lot to get where I am today, I would go as far to say that I was blessed,” Calderón said. “My story is filled with privilege because we were lucky enough to have a family here in Des Moines to help us.”
Besides telling their story, Calderón and his sister focus their energy on activism for their people as well as other racial groups. They try
to empower people of all ethnicities so everyone can be educated on what their family and others have gone through.
Calderón said he wants to become a teacher because of everything that he has experienced. He believes that since he has gone through so much, it will be easier for him to make a connection with his future students. He wants children to see the change that he has created, and inspire them to create change within themselves.
Leave a comment