For mixed-status families, US immigration reform would end anxiety

The US Senate passed a sweeping bill backed by President Barack Obama in June that offers a pathway to citizenship for many of the country's 11 million illegal immigrants, but the Republican-led House of Representatives opposes it.

For Junnyor and 16 million others like him in mixed-status families, reform could bring stability to a fraught situation in which a US-born child is a citizen with a shot at a university education and a stable working life, while a sibling or parent born abroad can face instability and deportation.

"There isn't a day that goes by that I don't worry for either my brother or my mother," said Junnyor, a basketball-loving 16-year-old whose childhood in Phoenix has been filled with anxiety. "I just want it to go away."

The family's complex life began when Angelica slipped over the porous border from Mexico with then 4-year-old Edder in 1995 in search of a better life in Arizona. She quickly found work washing dishes and enrolled Edder in school. A year later, Junnyor was born a US citizen.

Edder, now 23, acquired English swiftly, but he faced challenges on graduating high school in 2007. Despite grades that got him into a pre-law course at Arizona State University, he faced hefty international student fees because of his status.

"We were having to pay three times as much as any other student," Edder said. Ineligible for student loans and financial aid, he dropped out after a year.

His difficulties came amid a backlash from anti-illegal immigration activists and sweeps for the undocumented by a tough local sheriff, Joe Arpaio.

TERRIFYING ARREST

In 2010, a state law was passed requiring police to question those they stopped and suspected of being in the country illegally about their immigration status. That year, Edder was detained after he and a US-born friend took an illegal shortcut across the tracks of a light rail network.

"They let him go ... but the police came, handcuffed me and arrested me," he said.

After being interviewed by federal immigration police, he was sent to the Eloy Detention Center in the desert southeast of Phoenix and placed in deportation proceedings.

"I was terrified ... my family is here, my life is here," he said. "It was nothing I had ever experienced before." It took Angelica two months to scrape together the $12,500 bond to secure Edder's release to a family transformed by the experience.

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