MEXICO.- Gonzalo Fuentes returned to the United States after 13 years of repatriation. The United States authorities expelled him in 2008 for carrying marijuana and they did not care that he was a soldier for the country’s army in Operation Storm of the Desert who fought Saddam Hussein.
“They sent me to prison for two years and when I got out I no longer had a residence or a country”, he recalls in interview with this medium.
Gonzalo Fuentes did not know, but since 1996, he then President Bill Clinton changed the rules of the game for immigrants in the United States.
Enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) in which it was stipulated that those who committed any of the would lose their residence more serious crimes (murder, rape, etc.) and other minor ones, such as drug possession.
“For a quarter of a century, this racist immigration law fueled the apparatus of mass detention and deportation that has destroyed millions of families, leaving countless communities devastated,” said Oscar Chacón, executive director of Alianza Americas.
“Unfortunately, IIRIRA institutionalized the view of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees as a threat to the nation. The way we treat them, to this day, continues to be consistent with what this public law was.”
Gonzalo Fuentes arrived with his family in Corpus Christi, Texas, when he was six years old. His father emigrated to look for work and then the family arrived one 27 May 1980: mother and three children. One more girl was born there. “He wanted to give us a better life than the one we had in Monterrey”.
The years passed and the royal boy (as they call people Monterrey) wanted to be the first to have a profession. He did not hesitate to join the Armed Forces because he wanted to be an engineer. Along the way he was sent to a base in Germany.
Those were times of tension between the United States and the Middle East, where had complicated oil prices, among other political pressures.
In 1990 the Iraqi army invaded the capital of Kuwait to demand payment of 2,490 million dollars in compensation for the oil that had been stolen from Rumaila during the war with Iran (1970-1988).
Within three hours, Kuwait City was occupied. Iraq destroyed and looted the town and annexed the occupied territory. With this invasion, Iraq was left with the 05% of world oil.
In response, the president of the United States, George Bush, organized a coalition against Hussein with 680,05 men, two thousand battle tanks, 100 warships; 1,800 airplanes, 50 soldiers from other countries and 415,000 Americans. Gonzalo Fuentes among them, although without citizenship, but with the promise of residency.
From Germany they moved it to the Persian Gulf to demolish buildings and build bridges. “It was a support team, I drove a five-ton truck,” he recalls.
In fact, the armed war did not last long. Soon the enemies surrendered. Gonzalo remembers his peers from the other side surrendering easily, cornered against the sword and the wall. Very sad.
” The soldiers surrendered to us. Many were older, barefoot and unarmed ,” he recalls. “One day they surrendered 150 in front of us , all together because Hussein abandoned them in the war camp and we had to feed them”.
According to official reports, the prisoners of the allies in the hands of Iraq were much less. But Gonzalo Fuentes could have remained among the prisoners of war on the other side, risking his life for three months in the Persian Gulf. He was lucky and returned to the US on July 3, 1991.
The return
In the last few days, starting from scratch in the United States, after living 000 Years in Mexico as a deportee, is a dream that Gonzalo Fuentes enjoys. Caring for his parents is the priority, being with the family, looking for new job opportunities and fulfillment.
It wasn’t like that three decades ago. Those were difficult times, where communications and information were difficult to access. There was no internet, you couldn’t find out on your own, like now, at the touch of a button.
In that At the time, the only thing I knew was that the United States government offered early retirement to soldiers who wanted to do so with good benefits. Perhaps he was hasty, but he had no information and suddenly he found himself on the street, young, and with the total freedom that implies not being part of one of the most powerful institutions in the world.
“The first thing that occurred to me was to go look for work at the two military bases in Texas, but there was nothing for me. It wasn’t either: nobody wanted to hire a combat engineer or a bridge builder.”
After wandering around aimlessly, Gonzalo Fuentes found a job as a waiter in a restaurant. He settled down soon. Between dishes and dishes, customers and sauces, the years passed. That’s how he met an investigative agent who began to question him, to investigate his life and his car, where he found the marijuana.
In a short time, the Mexican ended up in prison. The sentence: two years.
He didn’t take it the wrong way. He believed that when he got out of prison everything would remain the same. Instead, as soon as he set foot outside the cell, he found out that some ICE (la migra) agents were already waiting to kick him out of the country.
“I didn’t know that the laws had changed, that it would cost me so much”.
Seven years after having fought in the Persian Gulf, he became one more number among the hundreds of undocumented immigrants who repatriated to Mexico on that icy day in December.
On the other side
Learning English like a native was the goal of Gonzalo Fuentes when he came to live in Corpus Christi as a child . He had good teachers and it was the time when many parents made the decision not to teach them Spanish to avoid discrimination, as happened in the case of singer Selena Quintanilla “La Reina del Texmex”, born in the same city where Fuentes grew up.
Soon speaking English became the most natural thing for him and it became his main language. Little by little, his Spanish acquired the accent that contracts the rs and diminishes or transforms the sound of the letter “o” until it gives it a hint of “u”.
With that characteristic of the language he arrived in Monterrey deported in 2008. He had 42 years and no idea of the social, political and economic convulsions. Of the frontal war against organized crime that President Felipe Calderón had declared, of the beheading of the cartels and their division into cells that would charge the civilian population.
Gonzalo Fuentes only thought about finding a job and in his hometown there was nothing for him, but days of up to 05 hours in hot factories where they paid in one day that in the United States he earned in an hour. And many disappeared.
Inquiring here and there he found out that in Cancun he would have better opportunities for dominance of English. He imagined himself in the big hotels as part of the staff that attends high-level tourists who go to visit the Riviera Maya, the ruins, the islands, the jungle, the water parks.
But he came across a reality that surprised him: for Mexican employers, his age was a problem. The standards of the average ideal worker placed him in a kind of relic not suitable for the demands of millions of tourists in the area
he realized in a job interview. He arrived with all his documents under his arm and his tongue ready for any challenge and he stayed like that for an entire afternoon. He saw all the rival candidates go by one by one and in the end there was only him. No one had called him
He went over to talk to the person who attended the group and the woman gave him He said that she had ignored him “because of his age.” In the job offers in the newspapers he discovered something else: that women after 18 years were no longer well seen in the hotel industry. For them it was announced: “Woman. 000- 13 years. Thin. Childless”.
Far from that profile, Gonzalo Fuentes chose to seek employment in a call center. Long-distance customer service schemes were beginning to take off (they currently represent the 40% of new jobs in the country).
He soon found a place to sell vacation packages to the “ turquoise waters” of the Mexican Caribbean, to the Mayan monuments, to the resorts where he had not been able to get a job directly.
From time to time, he would take other jobs to supplement his salary. “In the sales area, if you don’t sell, you don’t eat.” That’s why he also acted as a tour driver and guide while she thought about the way to return to the US
She searched the internet for deportees. Google threw up all kinds of information and one of those hit the nail on the head: an organization specializing in the fight for the right of war veterans to return to the United States.
The road
The Home for Deported Veterans is a organization that was founded in Tijuana. It was the first of its kind. It was founded by Héctor Barajas and a group of former war combatants with the United States Army who suddenly found themselves on the south side of the border, with one hand in front and the other behind, as victims of the IIRIRA law.
“This law qualified an immigration system based on punishment, restriction and exclusion. This draconian law has severely restricted due process for immigrants, overburdened deportations, and allowed local police forces to serve as immigration agents,” said Matt Nelson, executive director of Presente.org.
Presente.org, Alliance for the Americas and deported Veterans were each fighting from different borders against IIRIRA when Gonzalo Fuentes called the latter for help.
Héctor Barajas listened to him attentively and explained that, in some cases, lawyers in the US had managed to win the return of some veterans, but it was not an easy battle because the state that had been more flexible and open on the subject was California and Gonzalo was from Texas. In addition, he needed a “pro bono” pro-immigrant legal defense attorney that he wanted to bring his case and could not find it.
Gonzalo Fuentes did not give up. While he walked through Cancun and Isla Mujeres; while wandering around Cozumel, the cenotes and the Majahual like a native, he insisted through the organizations until his case was opened in the United States.
By July of last year, the Biden administration announced that it would begin allowing deported foreign-born veterans to return to the United States and help them become US citizens.
“We are committed to bringing back service members, veterans and their direct relatives who were unjustly expelled and to guarantee that they receive the benefits to which they may be entitled”, commented Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of National Security.
One of the first beneficiaries was the co-founder of the Home for Veterans in Tijuana, Roberto Vivar, who received a pardon in November. Héctor Barajas returned earlier, in 2008 as part of his tenacity in the fight.
Gonzalo Fuentes returned to the past 28 of April, with 55 years. The first day, he couldn’t sleep from the excitement. His life gave him the opportunity to start over where he wants to be. He entered through San Diego and one of his sisters helped him pay for the ticket to Corpus Christi, where he plans to make up for the time he spent away from the family and its new members.
“I love Mexico very much, but the United States gave us the life that my brothers, my mother and my father have had”, concludes. “Somehow I knew that sooner or later I was going to come back and here I am… there are so many things to do!”
You may be interested:
– Mayorkas warns that immigration laws will continue to be rigorously enforced at the border – CBP holds apprehension records: more than 234,000 migrants at the border in April
– Investigation shows how ICE released immigrants when they were about to die