ELKHART -- Marcela Valle, like many Latino immigrants in northern Indiana, was born in Mexico and grew up there.
The United States is home now, however, and the notion of returning doesn't sit easy.
"I have almost nothing in Mexico," said the woman, who has three children ages 1, 9 and 18, the two youngest born in the United States. "My family is here."
Even so, Valle, one of 36 suspected illegal aliens rounded up last year in a raid at Janco Composites in Mishawaka, faces the specter of deportation and separation from her family and everything else that has become familiar. It has her shuddering at the possibilities, worried about what may come of her family and life in Mishawaka, her new home.
"It'd be very difficult for my kids to return to Mexico," she said. "The smallest ones have never been there, they don't know what life is like in Mexico. My oldest, even though he's from Mexico, hardly remembers anything."
More broadly, the situation underscores the plight of the growing population of undocumented Latinos across Elkhart County, St. Joseph County and countless other U.S. locales as they struggle to find a place in their new communities. They live, work, worship and shop here and their kids attend local schools, yet their status remains tenuous, the threat of deportation always lurking in the background.
"Of course it alters the dynamics of the family," said Elkhart immigration attorney Tom Nuttle, alluding to instances when an illegal immigrant is deported, leaving U.S. citizen and U.S. resident family members behind. "I suppose it's like death. It's as if a person has been banished."
In Valle's case, she's hardly sitting by idly. Though she says some of the 36 detained last year at Janco have returned to Mexico, voluntarily or not, she's fighting moves by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to boot her from the country. Nuttle is her attorney and, against the odds, she seeks what in legal parlance is called "cancellation of removal proceedings," which, if successful, would let her stay in the United States legally.
"I've been here a long time," said Valle, 34, who came to the United States 14 years ago, first to Houston and, eight years ago, to Mishawaka. "It only seems fair to fight my cause, more than anything to assure the well-being of my children."
'A different life'
Valle slipped into the United States in 1993 with her oldest son, then a 3-year-old. Her husband already was working here and she and the boy left their hometown, a small place called Izucar de Matamoros in south central Mexico, to be with the man.
As with most immigrants from Mexico, good-paying jobs here were among the big lures, coupled with minimal economic opportunities back home. Back in Izucar, Valle baked cakes at home and sold them by the slice to help scrape by.
"I think if (an American) were in our situation, they'd do the same as us," she said, telling her story from the Elkhart office of her attorney. "When your kid gets sick and work doesn't provide enough to get ahead or treat your child, you think coming to the United States is the solution."
In the United States, Valle eventually separated from her husband and made it to the Mishawaka area, where two other siblings and her parents live.
She quickly landed a job at Janco with a made-up Social Security number, settled down with a new man and established a semblance of life. Her oldest son is now a junior at Mishawaka High School and eager to get his diploma while her younger boy, born in Houston, studies at Liberty Elementary School. They all attend St. Adalbert Catholic Parish in South Bend.
"When I came, obviously it was something very different," said Valle, who's now pregnant with her fourth child. "But we just started to live life, a different life."
Meanwhile, work at Janco, which manufactures fiberglass products, seemed to be going well.
"I didn't have any problems -- everything was OK when I worked there," said Valle, who handled a range of tasks, everything from quality control to operating machinery. "I tried to do the best I could and never had problems with my supervisors."
But then rumors started circulating, ominous rumors. Immigrations authorities were coming, the story went, though nobody knew quite when.
Everybody talked about it and it scared Valle, "but we had to work," she said. "We had family. We had to keep working."
Thus, when ICE agents finally did storm Janco on March 6, 2007 -- it turned out to be one of the biggest immigration raids in Michiana history -- she wasn't taken completely by surprise. "We knew what was going to happen," she said.
An uphill battle
Immigration authorities interviewed the workers, cuffed those lacking documents, including Valle, with plastic ties, put them on a bus and brought them to a jail somewhere outside Chicago. Along the way, the officials let Valle call home to advise her mother that she wouldn't be able to pick up her youngest son from school, that La Migra had nabbed her.
In detention, immigration authorities offered the detainees the option of accepting voluntary deportation, which would lead to their swift return to Mexico, if that were their home country. Some of her Janco colleagues accepted, Valle said, adding that she suspects some may later try to slip back into the United States. But she resisted and after a week or so posted $3,000 bond and returned home to Mishawaka.
She remains in removal proceedings and faces a date in U.S. Immigration Court in Chicago in April, though the entire process could take up to three years. She's determined in her bid to fight deportation, thinking of her kids and the tough life they would face in Mexico or, alternatively, here in the United States without her if she has to go.
Whatever the case, hers is an uphill battle.
Though immigration law lets undocumented immigrants petition for legal status, the requirements are rigorous and much is left to the discretion of the immigration judge in charge. She has to show she's been here continuously for at least 10 years, that she has "good moral character" and that remaining U.S. family members, her kids in this case, would suffer "extreme hardship" if she were deported, according to Nuttle.
"Many, many people apply for cancellation," he said. "It's my sense that only a small percentage are granted cancellation."
At the same time, Valle acknowledges that the decision to enter the United States illegally carries inherent risks.
"We know we don't have papers, many things can happen, they can deport us," she said.
Still, Nuttle says his client seems to comply with the requirements necessary to halt deportation and in Valle's mind, fighting deportation is the only way to go. She knows of families split by deportation and the resulting trauma isn't pretty, she maintains.
"For the kids, it's very difficult. They don't know what's going on," she said. "I think it causes a lot of emotional and mental damage."