By Crystal Leon, Staff Writer
IMMIGRATION: How Dolores Ordonez struggles to be here in America.
Immigrants are people who leave their country to live permanently in a foreign country, usually for better opportunities and for asylum. People who are against coming to this country illegally think that immigrants have nothing positive to offer this country. Despite what these people think, if one dives deeper into what kind of people immigrants are, one will find that they are hardworking, courageous, passionate, and honest and that they are willing to do anything for their family, and the people they love. Few know the struggle many immigrants are facing to be here in America. In an interview with the Poly Spotlight, Dolores Ordonez shed light on this struggle.
Dolores was born in Namiquipa, Mexico, and moved to the United States in 2001. The reason she came to America was like many others, for a better life. “I was pregnant with my son and I was very scared of giving birth in Mexico because there’s no work over there,” she told the Spotlight. She came to America with the intention of giving birth to her son so she obtained a six-month visa. Also, like many other illegal immigrants, she dealt with racism, police harassment, and low income as do many other immigrants.
Once her six months were up, however, Dolores never left. Her visa expired, and she was considered illegal. She started working in food trucks when her son was only a month old because no one else would hire her. “That’s the only place that gives a job to people with no papers,” she said. “I couldn’t get a job under the air conditioning like other people, because [those jobs] required papers.” She left her son with her sister Rosa and went to work at 3 A.M. every day. Dolores lived in a two-room apartment with 9 people, including herself and her two sisters. They were only getting paid a minimum of $45 a day, for 11-hour shifts.
Many immigrants fear the police and avoid their attention at all costs. Dolores, too, tried her best to do the same, but despite her effort, she still had her run-ins. Whilst trying to avoid the police on the way to work at 3 in the morning, Dolores was pulled over by a police officer, who “insisted that she had drugs in her breasts.” At the time, Dolores did not speak English and she tried to tell him that she did not have drugs. However, the officer told her to get out of her vehicle. When she got out, he pulled her into his patrol car and made her take off her shirt as he scanned her for drugs, touching her body inappropriately. “I tried telling him that my breasts were big because I just had my son who was a month old,” she said, “but he still touched me and told me I was hiding drugs.”
This was, sadly, not the end for Dolores. Her sister Ana called the police in hopes that they would bring justice for Dolores after the incident, but justice never came. After Ana called the police, they knew where Dolores lived and they terrorized her for almost two weeks. “Different police went to my house and tried getting information out of me. They came to my apartment every day to make sure I was not talking to lawyers,” Dolores said. The police checked her phone to make sure she wasn’t texting any lawyers because they thought that she was going to sue them. There were times when Dolores and her sister Ana went to her other sister’s house because they were so filled with fear. The last day the police went to their house, they threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and send Dolores back to Mexico without her son, who was born in the United States. She told them that she wouldn’t tell anyone as long as they left her alone and stopped calling her phone. After that, she never heard from or saw them again.
Although Dolores struggled just to give her son a better life then she had, she soon got her citizenship and worked a stable job selling cars. She can now fluently speak English, and she is living on her own. She bravely overcame the obstacles in her path and is now living the life she fought so hard to get.