if you hold my hand, no one will be able to take you away from me

371 Pages·2016·7.5 MB·English

by  William Lopez

“IF YOU HOLD MY HAND, NO ONE WILL BE ABLE TO TAKE YOU AWAY FROM ME”:
THE HEALTH IMPLICATIONS OF AN IMMIGRATION RAID ON A MIXED-STATUS
LATINO COMMUNITY IN WASHTENAW COUNTY, MICHIGAN

By

William D. Lopez

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Health Behavior and Health Education)
in the University of Michigan
2016

Doctoral Committee:
Professor Barbara A. Israel, Chair
Professor Jason P. De León
Professor Jorge Delva
Research Assistant Professor Daniel J. Kruger
“...anthropology that doesn’t break your heart just isn’t worth doing anymore.”

-Ruth Behar, The Vulnerable Observer, 1996
© William D. Lopez, 2016
DEDICACIÓN

A Guadalupe
Por compartir sus exeriencias conmigo.
Por recibir a mis hijos.
Por mejorar mi vida.
Por mejorar mi país.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Mia got out of her car seat and stood next to the car. She waited for me, patiently, to
get my backpack out so that we could walk inside together. I was distracted and I
was taking forever. But she kept waiting. Then she began to cry.

Mia was six, I was in the beginning stages of writing this dissertation, and together
with her 3-year-old brother Miguel and my partner Katie, we had just attended the
rally for Susana Bernabe-Hernandez, who, along with her 16 year-old-daughter,
Sayra, were a week away from their deportations. It was an emotional time for
Susana and Sayra, for the advocates working on their case, and for the families,
friends, and community members who held signs to protest the separation of an
undocumented mother and her 16-year-old undocumented daughter from their U.S.
citizen daughter/sister with epilepsy.

A week later, after countless interviews, petitions, and meetings, and about 12 hours
before they were scheduled to step on a plane, Susana and Sayra received a stay of
removal, giving them more time to be together as a family and fight their case in the
U.S. I told Mia the good news as we parked in front of Subway to get dinner prior to
her brother’s swim lesson. Before she got out of the car, she paused and looked out
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the window. She let out a sigh of something more profound than relief. She smiled at
me, fighting back tears of, this time, joy. Then she went to eat.

This dissertation was both intellectually and emotionally challenging. But every
time it was hard on me, I imagine it was harder on my family. My partner Katie and
my children Mia and Miguel have not only supported me, but have actively stood
beside me, painting their faces like skeletons at a “Death to Deportation” rally,
eating cold pizza in front of Sayra’s middle school, and occasionally salsa-ing with
me at ESL parties. My family is
my reason for living, and my
reason for fighting for those
whose families are separated
by immigration enforcement.
They have been mi equipito, y
los mejores luchadores que
existen. They have been my
piedra from the beginning.

There are faculty and scientists
I count myself as blessed to
have ever encountered, let alone call friends. Julia Seng first taught me that a
“feminist analysis” was not only an analytic strategy but a world view. Mark Padilla
for some reason had faith in my capacity for ethnography when I’d spent the
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previous three years collecting hormones in a lab. Louis Graham taught me that we
do our work to grant agency to our families and communities. We do it because
people that we know and love are sick, are in prison, are deported. We do it not to
give voice. We do it to amplify it.

As far as ethnography goes, I owe a great deal to those from the Detroit Youth
Passages project, especially Angie Reyes from the Detroit Hispanic Development
Corporation, who told me once, “don’t wear blue there, that’s Bloods territory” and
Laura Hughes from the Ruth Ellis Center, who told me “this survey is good, but its
way too straight, you need to queer it up a little.” Armando Matiz welcomed me into
his world of dancing, music, and ethnography, from which I never quite returned
(nor would ever want to).

Thank you to the many members of the Washtenaw Coalition for Immigrant Rights,
including Margaret and Melanie Harner, Laura Sanders, Ramiro Martinez, and Mary
Anne Peronne, who tirelessly answered my questions about what happened on
November 11, 2013. Specifically, Melanie and Ramiro were essential in carrying out
the fieldwork and conducting the interviews in this study. Without them, it simply
would not have happened.

There are many others who have suffered along in this writing process before me
and with me and supported the work in various ways to whom I am greatful: my
brother Ben and his wife Celena; my friends, Will Hartman, Jonah Siegel, Meghan
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Eagen-Torkko, Lee Roosevel, and Jacqueline Antonovich; and my cohort-mates in
Public Health, Jorge Soler, Rebecca Mandell, Andria Eisman, and Maria Militzer. And
to Elizabeth Mosley, Alex Kulick, and Connie Britton, thanks for all the humor slash
the things.

Raúl Gamez, Carlos Robles, and Laura Sanchez-Parkinson, are among the many
Latin@s who have been patient with my evolving Spanish and consistently provided
advice, guidance, inspiration, y raices. I hope my children are like you.

Ruth Behar taught me that writing style itself ranks among the most powerful of our
academic tools. We are privileged to have been trusted with stories of joy and
suffering, bravery and pavor, and we owe it to those who shared their lives with us
to be daring in our writing. Thanks Ruth.

Maria Ibarra and my relationship goes way back, before she even knew me, when I
saw her “come out” about being undocumented in front of the ICE office in Detroit. I
admired her ever since then, and was later blessed with the opportunity to “teach”
her about public health research. She of course taught me more than I ever could—
about advocacy, about purpose, about work ethic—and was always game for
supporting this dissertation in any way I could think of. Maria, I look forward to
working for you one day : )

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To my friend, mentor, and colleague, Alana Lebrón, I am tremendously greatful for
the guidance and constructive feedback that you have patiently given me over the
years we have worked together. Thank you for processing with me as we both,
perhaps against our better judgement, engaged in mixed-methods immigration
research. Lastly, thanks for showing me that research can be bold, daring, and even
empowering.

Vicenta Vargas, Nicole Novak, Patrick Mullen, Montana Nash, Sam Whaley, Julia
Porth and the other members of our “Immigration and Health” lab, thank you for
listening to these stories over, and over, and over and providing insight and
guidance into how to be sensitive, astute, methodologically sound, and passionate.

There are many people I have met along the course of this research who enriched
the work and my life, among them Felipe Riaño and his family; Nayelly Mena-
Martinez and her family; Fredy and Ana Mencia and their children; Glenda,
Armando, and their children; Irene and Miguel and their children; Keta Cowan,
Janelle Fa’aola, Olivia Temrowski, and the amazing folks with the Washtenaw ID
Project; Charo Ledón, Carrie Amber Rheingans, Adreanne Waller, Mikel Llanes, Kate
Murphy Guzman, Brad Thomson, Martha Valadez, Jenn Felix, and Heather Branton;
Catalina Ormsby and the UROP Office; and Woody Neighbors, Amy Schulz, Andy
Grogan-Kaylor, and the many other wonderful professors I have had at UM.

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I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of law enforcement personnel who welcomed
me into their work. The four anonymous officers who shared their cruisers with me:
thank you for trusting me with such a personal side of your life. Derrick Jackson,
Kathy Wyatt, and Sheriff Jerry Clayton at the Washtenaw County Sherriff’s Office
were helpful and cooperative at all times and I have come to admire the work they
do and how they do it. Their belief in transparency is steadfast and an example to be
followed by other departments. And especially, Louis Gomez, a former ICE agent
who had his life changed by a raid he conducted, showed me how complicated these
stories really are, with “heroes” and “villains” a far too simple dichotomy to capture
the world. Thanks for humanizing officers for me as you have.

Marie, John, Noe, and others at the NCID have generously provided the space,
guidance, and often funding, to do this work and do it well. Thank you.

Many organizations and indivdiuals have supported this work financially, making
the travel and presentations involved possible. This includes Rackham Graduate
School, the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, the Center for
Research on Ethnicity Culture and Health, and the National Center for Institutional
Diversity. I also thank John and Janis Burkhardt at the NCID, Louis Graham at the
Public Engagement Project at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Julia
Seng, Mark Padilla, James and Maria Lopez, and Mikel Llanes for their assistance in
purchasing the copyright to the publication of the first analytic chapter of this
dissertation.
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