Thread: What will happen to Kayla Part 4, 5, 6

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/ ... 617371.htm










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Posted on Wed, Sep. 27, 2006



A bittersweet homecoming as hope fades
Deported mother knows Guatemala lacks comforts her kids enjoy in U.S.
DÁNICA COTO AND PETER ST. ONGE
dcoto@charlotteobserver.com | pstonge@charlotteobserver.com

The journey to Guatemala began with a bus ride, from jail in Etowah County, Alabama, to federal court in Atlanta. It was May 9, and Deysi Ramírez had spent 46 days in prison. Soon, she would be free in her homeland.

Twelve years ago, she had come to the U.S. the way millions of immigrants had before her, with bus rides from Guatemala through Mexico, then two days of walking, a swim across the Rio Grande, an arranged car ride to some train tracks, an arranged train ride into Texas.

Now she was being deported.

In Atlanta, she signed U.S. and Guatemalan travel documents, and a Guatemalan consul interviewed her to confirm she was a citizen there. The next night, Deysi's arms and legs were shackled, and she rode another bus seven hours to Louisiana. There, four women and 104 men boarded a Justice Prisoner Alien Transfer flight at 8 a.m. It was one of about a dozen such flights that leave the U.S. every week.

Before takeoff, a man approached her. He had gang symbols tattooed on his arm and neck, Deysi remembers. What's up, sweet thing! he said.

Deysi looked out the window.

She remembers thinking of her partner, Ray, back in Monroe, and about their children. Only Kayla, the oldest at 11, understood where her mother was going, and why. Kayla wondered what this would mean to their family.

Will we move to Guatemala? she asked Ray.

I don't know, he said.

If we go to Guatemala, can we all come back to the U.S.?

No, Ray said.

Kayla, along with 9-year-old Sammy and 5-year-old Sandy, were U.S. citizens. Deysi and Ray were illegal immigrants. Until now, Deysi had contemplated simply crossing back to the U.S. and getting a ride to North Carolina. But on the day she left Etowah, a federal judge told her she would be jailed for years if caught in the U.S. again.

Soon, she would have a new option to consider.

Not like Monroe

At the Guatemala City airport, Deysi noticed a man following her. She walked faster, scared that he was trying to rob her. Hey, what's your name? the man asked.Deysi turned.

Her brother, Natanael, was a skinny 12-year-old when she last saw him. He was 25 now, with lean muscles and long sideburns.

They took three beat-up buses to reach San Juan Sacatepéquez, near the village where Deysi's family lived. The last bus stopped in front of a landfill, leaving them a half-mile walk along a rutted dirt road littered with lazy dogs.

Most who lived in the village, Comunidad de Ruiz, were Indians of Mayan descent. Women sold tortillas, vegetables and live geese and chickens at the marketplace, while men cultivated roses and chrysanthemums on sloping hills. The village smelled like smoke because people cooked outside; few had electric stoves. Garbage trucks didn't service the town, so residents tossed their trash into piles along sidewalks and cliffs.

When Deysi reached the gate of her family's home, she saw the back of a woman. Argelia, her mother, was across the yard, washing clothes by hand.

Natanael called out. Argelia turned. Deysi walked to her. Their eyes filled with tears. I'm sorry I've been gone so long, Deysi whispered.

Mother and daughter had their first meal together in 12 years, and they talked into the night. Deysi showed her pictures of her grandchildren.

I can't wait to see them, Argelia said.

Deysi said nothing.

Major adjustments expected

"Ray, is that you?"

Deysi stood in a barren yard, trying to get better cell phone reception. Behind her was her family's three-bedroom house, built with cinder blocks and covered by a tin roof that baked its occupants when the sun came out.

"Hello?"

Justiniano, Deysi's late father, had built the house with money that Deysi and another brother had sent from North Carolina. Deysi's arrival meant seven people, including three children, shared the cramped home.

"I can't hear you."

It was Kayla.

"Hi, honey, how are you?" Deysi said. "They're giving you an award tomorrow? I'm proud of you."

Next were Sammy and Sandy, who still didn't know why their mother was in Guatemala. When Sandy asked what she was doing there, Deysi cheerfully replied, "Talking with you!"

Tears streaked her cheeks.

Deysi was struggling. She was bored after only a few days, and she missed things she had forgotten were luxuries in her village. Instead of flushable toilets and running water, here she turned a makeshift handle and cranked up a bucket of water from a well about 200 feet deep. She had difficulty imagining her children doing the same.

Certainly, this village would be an adjustment for them all. In Monroe, they had settled into a comfortable life, with health insurance and a 401(k) through work, with public education from the taxes they paid, with pizza as a treat every weekend.

Here, her Guatemalan family was among the 75 percent in the country who lived in poverty, thanks in part to a 36-year civil war that displaced almost 1 million people. Schools were free only until the sixth grade, and affordable health care in their village came only from Christian missionaries, who offered it free with a sermon. In Argelia's home, money came from Natanael's 26-year-old wife, Leticia, who worked seven days a week at Pollo Campero, a popular, fast-food chicken restaurant. Leticia's pay: 1,400 quetzales a month, about $175.

Deysi decided not to get a job yet. If the children joined her from Monroe, Ray wanted her to concentrate on finding a school. He could send money until he eventually joined them there.

Ray also wanted Deysi to keep an eye on the children. He worried about what international agencies had warned for years -- that children were known to disappear in Guatemala, stolen for unauthorized adoptions.

There was an alternative: Deysi's brother had called from Monroe. He was worried about Kayla going to Guatemala.

She's doing so well in school here, he told Deysi.

I can keep her.

Deysi had another idea. She missed her family -- and the life they had in Monroe. She decided to tell Ray she was willing to risk jail. She was ready to hire a coyote at the border.

She wanted to risk crossing illegally again.

COMING THURSDAY: The decision.


The Story So Far

Kayla Ramírez's mother, Deysi, was arrested in March during a routine traffic stop in Monroe. She faces deportation to Guatemala for having failed to follow up on an application for U.S. asylum. Kayla, 11, has adjusted at home, but she and her brother and sister face an uncertain future.






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PART 5






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Posted on Thu, Sep. 28, 2006



A mother's desire to reunite family risks a daughter's future

DÁNICA COTO AND PETER ST. ONGE
dcoto@charlotteobserver.com | pstonge@charlotteobserver.com

What should they do with the children?

For weeks, they had avoided the question, then whispered about it in phone conversations, then let it begin to come between them.

It was late May. Deysi Ramírez was restless in Guatemala. She missed Ray and her three children in Monroe. She longed for simple things -- running water, a stereo, a microwave oven.

Only two weeks had passed since she had been deported for failing to follow through on U.S. asylum paperwork. She wanted to cross the border illegally again.

Too risky, said Ray. Better to be in Guatemala -- away from her children temporarily -- than in a U.S. jail, as a judge had promised if she were caught again.

Ray was right, Deysi knew.

And so, they had to decide.

The children.

Five-year-old Sandy was young and spirited, they thought, and she would adjust to Guatemala. Sammy, who was 9, was struggling in school, on his way to failing third grade in Monroe. Both would go live with their mother, Deysi and Ray agreed.

Then there was Kayla. She was 11, a top student, an achiever in most everything she did. Her last day of school was two weeks away, and her latest fifth-grade report card was glowing, as always. "She will continue to achieve academic excellence," her teacher wrote.

Kayla could stay in Monroe if Deysi and Ray wanted, because like her siblings, she was a U.S. citizen.

The decision, Deysi remembers thinking, came down to this: What is love?

Is it keeping your family together? Or letting your child go so she can flourish?

A chance to stay

Leave Kayla with me, said Ray's sister.Silvia lived in Union County, in a middle-class neighborhood with an American husband and a family.

She had been in the U.S. for two decades, first on a work permit, then as a permanent resident after she married. She was now studying to become a U.S. citizen.

Silvia had done well in her adopted country. She trained new employees for Tyson Foods, and she worked part time for an insurance company. On the weekends, she had a profitable booth at the flea market, selling soccer apparel and quinceañera dresses that she traveled to Mexico at least twice a year to get.

Here, Silvia thought, was opportunity. Kayla could have a bright future if she stayed, starred in school, went to college. What kind of future would Kayla have in Guatemala?

Silvia thought it disrespectful to ask Deysi such questions -- but she whispered into Ray's ear: Our younger sister was deported two years ago. She took the kids to Mexico for a year, and they all came back. Why couldn't Deysi do the same?

If you make Kayla leave, Silvia warned, you're going to cry tears of blood.

The consequences feared

Leave Kayla here, Ray thought.

But he couldn't bring himself to say it to Deysi.

Instead, he hinted at his feelings, talking to her about the quality of schools in Guatemala, about how well Kayla was doing here. Privately, he worried about more.

He wondered how an 11-year-old American girl could adjust to the poverty of Deysi's village. Even the littlest things would be jarring. Here, Kayla could walk barefoot into a room to shower, to go to the bathroom. In Guatemala, she'd have to go outside, through the mud, to an outhouse.

Ray thought Kayla could adapt, but she was strong-willed, even stubborn. Would she grow frustrated with her new life?

But this decision, Ray thought, was Deysi's to make. In Latin American culture, mothers are revered and make most decisions involving children. Ray didn't want to stand between a mother and her daughter.

He knew, most of all, that Deysi missed her children.

He knew she was worried that they weren't missing her.

He didn't tell her that Sandy had started calling Silvia "mom."

Family and love

By June, Deysi and Ray were fighting more often. Deysi had been gone from Monroe more than two months, and distance was wearing down their trust.When Deysi's cell phone stopped working, Ray thought she was avoiding his calls. Friends told him that if the children went to Guatemala, Deysi would forget about him.

No, Deysi said.

Ray provided her with a love she never saw between her parents. That love, that family, was the most important thing to her.

Deysi cringed, though, when she thought about the education Kayla might receive in San Juan Sacatepéquez. It was unusual for any teacher to have a college degree, and many children dropped out of sixth grade to help their family financially. Even a one-time scholarship offer from the government in 2003 didn't stop children from leaving school to work with explosive chemicals in the area's fireworks factories.

Deysi searched for bilingual schools, the closest of which was a 15-minute bus ride away. The school cost 300 quetzales, or almost $40, for registration, then half that each month for tuition. Deysi didn't know if she could afford it.

She thought about her childhood, her brief education, how she had to get a job at 14 years old. Still, she recalled growing up happy. Poverty doesn't bring you down, she remembers thinking.

She couldn't abandon her children.

She told Kayla, Forgive me for what I'm about to do.

She told her to start teaching Sammy and Sandy how to read and write in Spanish.

Coming Friday: A new life.


The Story So Far

Kayla Ramírez's mother, Deysi, was deported to Guatemala for having failed to follow up on an application for U.S. asylum. Deysi worries about how her children might adjust to the poverty in her village, and whether 11-year-old Kayla could get a good education. Deysi decides she wants to cross illegally back into the United States.






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© 2006 Charlotte Observer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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PART 6







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Posted on Fri, Sep. 29, 2006



Together in new world
Kayla and her siblings reunite with their mother for the first time in 5 months.
DÁNICA COTO AND PETER ST. ONGE
dcoto@charlotteobserver.com | pstonge@charlotteobserver.com

Together in new world Kayla and her siblings reunite with their mother for the first time in 5 months. Now, the U.S.-born children must adapt to a vastly different life in Guatemala.

Goodbye to the school bus that rumbles past on weekday mornings. Kayla Ramírez follows it with her eyes today from her aunt's front lawn in Monroe. On this August morning, she will be taking a different trip.

Goodbye to her cousins, whom she played with all summer while passports were processed and her Aunt Silvia waited to ask for time off work. Silvia had hoped that Kayla's mother, Deysi Ramírez, might change her mind about this day, this journey.

Deysi would not.

Five months have passed since Deysi was stopped in Monroe for a traffic violation. Three months have passed since she was deported for failing to follow through on U.S. asylum paperwork.

More than once, she contemplated crossing the border illegally to be back with her three children and Ray, her partner of 10 years. Instead, they decided 5-year-old Sandy, 9-year-old Sammy and 11-year-old Kayla would move to Guatemala.

All of the children are U.S. citizens.

Goodbye to their lives here.

They ride to the airport with their aunt, an uncle and their father, who dreaded this day. Ray dreamed the night before that he, not his sister, would accompany the children to Guatemala. But he is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, still trying to save money here, unwilling to leave and face the risk of return to the U.S.

At Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, he unloads 10 suitcases. Eight are over the 50-pound limit, so he and Silvia move clothes and food from bag to bag. Left behind are jeans, shoes and Cinnamon Toasters cereal. The coffee maker and microwave will make the trip.

Near the gate, Ray's phone rings. Deysi. He tells her to take care of the children. He tells her again. "You're taking my entire life," he says.

The plane is boarding. The children stand.

Goodbye to their father.

Ray walks slowly to them. A lift-and-squeeze for little Sandy, a hug for Sammy, a long embrace for Kayla. "Take care of your mom," he tells her.

He watches them down the walkway to the airplane.

He watches the walkway until the last passenger has boarded.

He walks to a window, 30 feet high, and watches the jet idle, then back away from the gate, then head toward the runway. When the plane rolls out of sight, he steps left to catch another glimpse, then another, and again, until he finally runs out of windows.

The flight home

The children yelp as the plane takes off. It's the first time Sandy and Sammy have flown, and Sammy asks if someone can close the window shade because he's afraid.Kayla talks to a man in the next seat. He tells her his daughter is a lawyer in San Juan Sacatepéquez, a town near the village where Kayla will live. Kayla had once thought of becoming a lawyer, but changed her mind because she thought lawyers had to lie. She likes, however, that a woman near her new home has become a professional.

Two days ago, Kayla asked a school librarian if there were any books on Guatemala. There weren't. She was hoping to learn about schools there and what jobs she could do to help her mom.

The flight lasts three hours and 20 minutes.

Outside Aeropuerto Internacional La Aurora, Silvia and the children scan the crowd for Deysi, who waves her hand wildly at the sight of her family. Sammy runs for her and tackles her. Then Sandy. Then Kayla. A cluster of arms and kisses.

Deysi steps back and looks at Kayla, whom she hasn't seen in five months. She notices Kayla's eyebrows, which have been shaped into little arches. Kayla proudly says she did them herself. Deysi tells her she's not old enough for that.

The children climb onto a rickety pickup that Deysi has rented. They chug through Guatemala City's thick smoke, stopping to buy chips and drinks. When Deysi finishes her Coca-Cola, she throws the can out of the truck.

"Mommy!" Kayla says. "You're littering! That's not cool!"

"That's why my country's so dirty," Deysi says.

"My country's clean," Kayla says. "If you litter, you have to pay."

Settling in

After almost two hours, the truck arrives in Comunidad de Ruiz and lurches into Deysi's yard. Argelia, her mother, stands on the porch wearing a bright turquoise dress.

"Abue!" the children shout.

Grandma.

Dinner that night is a celebration -- and a splurge: fried chicken, rice, salad and cake. The family of 11 crowds around the table, laughing, telling jokes and sharing food.

When Deysi throws chicken bones to two skinny dogs, Kayla makes a face. When Kayla asks where she can put her leftovers, Deysi points to the yard. Kayla wanders until she finds an empty water pail, then dumps in her napkin and bones. She doesn't understand she's supposed to throw garbage down the cliff behind the house.

After dinner, Deysi picks up Sandy and plays with her. "Little princess," she says. Kayla watches from a corner, tears in her eyes, and listens to her MP3 player. Her Guatemalan relatives are curious about it. Is it a radio? No, Kayla explains, you download songs from the Internet.

Deysi laughs. "There's no Internet here," she says. Natanael, her brother, offers hope. His friend works part time at an Internet cafe.

As Deysi unpacks suitcases that night, Kayla asks if she is staying in Guatemala for only a year.

"Not longer?" Deysi says.

"Until I'm 18?" Kayla asks.

No answer.

Deysi keeps unpacking and finds gifts for everyone. Her 4-year-old niece gets Sandy's old clothes. Her brother gets new soccer cleats. Her mother gets new shoes and a microwave, which she learns to use.

Deysi's children have one request -- they want to sleep with their mother that night.

A new environment

At first, life in Guatemala is about little adjustments and big adventures.Roosters crow at night, and bus horns blare at 4:30 a.m. Schoolchildren appear at 7, carrying small logs so their teachers can light a fire and heat their atol, a corn-based drink.

The adventures come courtesy of Deysi, who spends more than she can afford to fill her children's first days in Guatemala with activities. The zoo. A trip to the historic ruins. A shopping trip in Guatemala City. All punctuated by her loud laugh and generous hugs.

At one store, a saleswoman is impressed that Sandy speaks English and Spanish. Are you from the U.S. or Guatemala? she asks. Both, Sandy says.

Sandy has started crying several times a day, something she never did in Monroe. She is jealous of her three young cousins and doesn't like to share Deysi with them.

Her brother, Sammy, is withdrawn. He tells his mother he doesn't want to learn Spanish or go to school in Guatemala. He doesn't like rice and beans. I am American, he says.

During the shopping trip in Guatemala City, he wants to spend the few dollars in his wallet on chips and drinks. Instead, he takes out the bills and hands them to a man with no legs sitting in a homemade wheelbarrow.

Trying to stay positive

Deysi has picked a school for the children. Friends Forever High School is in San Juan Sacatepéquez, a 15-minute bus ride from their village. It serves first grade through ninth in a small white building on a crumbly, muddy road.

Deysi takes her children to visit. On the way, she tells a friend that because of government policy regarding children coming from the U.S., Kayla might have to repeat fifth grade.

"No! No!" Kayla says. "Not fifth grade."

At Friends Forever, 48 elementary-grade students attend weekday classes. On Saturdays, 22 students attend grades 7-9. Most are boys who work weekdays to support their families.

The school combined its fifth and sixth grades this year because only one girl enrolled in sixth grade. Like Deysi, girls in rural Guatemala usually drop out as teenagers because they're expected to work.

Kayla sits in a math class, where 12-year-old Edgar Pirir struggles to solve a three-digit multiplication problem. Kayla whispers the answer to her mom. She puts her head in her hands. In Monroe, she had been taking an advanced math class, learning prime factoring.

Deysi chose this school because it's bilingual; she wanted Kayla to keep learning English. But students take English class only once a week, and they are now learning the names for body parts.

But Kayla is hopeful.

There are few students.

Maybe, she thinks, teachers will have more time to work with me.

Maybe, she thinks, I'll learn more.

Future still in question

In early September, Deysi's cell phone rings.It's Ray, wondering how his family is doing, and why Deysi isn't calling as often.

Ray's sister, Silvia, had reported back from Guatemala about the living conditions the children face. Ray thinks his children will call him in a month, begging to come back. Still, he plans on sending money so Deysi's family can pay the equivalent of $750 to get running water.

Ray hopes to join them in Guatemala, but he's not sure when. If he saves enough money, he'll leave by December, then eventually move his family to Mexico and open a store to sell clothing and toys.

He knows Deysi might want to stay in Guatemala.

She's also said she might want to cross back into the U.S. next year.

If I leave to be with you and the children, Ray says, I'm not coming back to the U.S.

Make sure, he tells her, this is what you want.

`No' heard more often

In Guatemala, Deysi enjoys preparing meals and choosing clothes for Kayla. She is still a girl, Deysi says, one who's very trusting of people. She has a lot to learn, her mother thinks.

That, Deysi says, is what her decision came down to -- helping mold Kayla, helping her value and respect herself as she grows from a child to a young woman.

If they stay in Latin America, Deysi would like Kayla to return to the U.S. at 15 so she can finish high school and prepare for any career she chooses. At 15, she'll be old enough to make her own decisions, to take responsibility for her mistakes.

But now, Kayla is always angry, always complaining.

There's nothing here, she says. There's nobody.

Deysi tells her to write, to read.

Kayla refuses.

She wants to see her new friends in San Raymundo, a nearby town. She likes how they talk less and play more than her American friends. Deysi tells her she can't afford the daily bus trips. Kayla pouts.

Lately, it seems "No" has become Deysi's standard answer to her children's questions.

No, we can't afford to eat at a McDonald's or Pizza Hut this weekend, she tells Sammy.

No, we're not going to see your father now, she tells Sandy when they leave for El Petén in northern Guatemala to see relatives.

No, we're not going back to the United States.

Deysi wishes she had a different response.

She feels guilty about not following up on her asylum application. It was, she knows, an opportunity for a legal life in the U.S.

Still, she wonders why she was deported if she didn't harm anyone.

"The only thing I did," she says, "was work, help my family here, and give my children the best life I could."

A daughter understands

In North Carolina, the yellow school bus still stops every morning in front of the house where Kayla used to wait.Only her cousins board the bus now.

At school, her former classmates are learning about decimals and the difference between rocks and minerals.

Kayla will not be in school for the next three months. Classes in Guatemala resume in January.

She has been visiting her cousins in El Petén this month. One of them, 11-year-old Mirna, is excited about starting third grade next year. The girls have had fun bathing in a nearby river and running barefoot through the mud.

One night, Deysi tucks her daughter into bed. She sits next to Kayla and wishes her a good night.

I think living here will be really different, Kayla says.

Her eyes began to close.

I know, she tells her mother, this isn't what you wanted.

The Story So Far

Kayla Ramírez's mother, Deysi, was deported to Guatemala for having failed to follow up on an application for U.S. asylum. Deysi and Ray, her partner of 10 years, decide that their three children will join their mother in Guatemala.

FROM THE EDITOR

7A | Editor Rick Thames says putting a face on the issue of illegal immigration can tell us more.






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Well this shows that if we deport the illegal parents, they will take their anchor baby fake citizens with them. Win-win.

I don't feel sorry for that lady at all. She can keep her free-loading, littering butt in her dump of a village. It's no more fair/unfair for her to come her verses all the other people of Guatamala.

And just another thought, when she got pulled over for driving with no ID, I wonder if she had insurance on that car? I bet not. Just another bill for an American to pay. But hey, her kid is making average grades in a dumbed-down school. What a loss for our country. (<--- sarcasm)

Am I supposed to be shedding a tear or two here?

Well, I'm not. Send the lady back, and her anchor babies too.