Tom Kobylecy and Yedid Sánchez’s budding romance unfolded amid the intoxicating smell of woody oak and sawdust from a Chicago-area Home Depot. Her cleaning shift began at 6 a.m., just as her shift restocking store shelves was ending. He lingered to strike up a conversation, but Yedid, originally from Cuernavaca, Mexico, spoke little English. The few Spanish words he could manage came out with a nasal Midwestern accent.
After a few stilted attempts at conversation with the help of bilingual friends, she asked for her number, Spanish for the name. “I thought she was asking for my number,” Tom said. So, naturally, he gave her his number. A week later, he asked her out for pizza. On their second date, he asked her to go fishing. Tom grabbed three and made them shake ‘n’ bake style. Yedid didn’t suggest that the meal wasn’t particularly appetizing – if she had, they might not have kissed later that evening.
Comical misunderstandings and fumbling translations using a pocket dictionary were a feature of those first weeks together. On one of their dates, they agreed to meet at a restaurant, not realizing that they were thinking of different restaurants with the same name. “He was angry because I didn’t show up, I was angry because he didn’t show up,” Yedid laughed.
Logistical hiccups aside, Tom had a good idea of where things would go with Yedid, though others expressed doubts. “[A friend] told me I was naive, that Yedid was just using me to get her immigration papers,” Tom said.
Despite his friend’s objections, he asked her to move into his one-bedroom apartment after a few months of dating. Tom told his family and friends that he would not rush things with Yedid any more than he already had. It was a promise he had no intention of keeping. “I intended to marry her when we moved in together,” he said. “I didn’t tell him right away, but I knew.”
A few months later, at Aurelio’s Pizza restaurant where they had their first date, Tom proposed with his mother’s wedding ring, and Yedid accepted without hesitation. “We couldn’t afford a big wedding, we were broke,” Tom said. They married in January 2004 at a Cook County courthouse. Only a few close friends and family were present. “It was a fragile start,” Yedid said of their nuptials.
They had no money to speak of, but dreamed of one day buying a house in a middle-class neighborhood where their son, Teddy, born in their first year of marriage, would play in the streets.
But their life together was shrouded in secrecy. Yedid was not living in the country legally.
Yedid’s parents operated a food stand called Antojitos Doña Mago in Cuernavaca that served quesadillas, gorditas and tacos. His father’s poor health shifted the burden of running the business and household to his mother. The money they earned from the food stand was barely enough to support the family, let alone pay for the medication his father needed for type 2 diabetes. His condition had already led to a heart attack and a blood clot in his leg.
Their struggle was familiar to the community, and the remedy was the promise of well-paying employment in the United States for anyone willing to risk unauthorized immigration. “My mother didn’t like the idea of me going,” Yedid said, “but she preferred to give me her blessing than let me go without her.”
In February 1997, at just 15 years old, Yedid crossed the US-Mexico border for the first time and went to Chicago.
Yedid lived under the radar, concocting work as a cleaner and caring for children from wealthy families. She had dutifully sent money home to help her parents until her life with Tom changed everything. Tom didn’t want her to take the risk of working illegally, fearing it would get her expelled. And neither of them wanted a life in the shadows for little Teddy. Immigration lawyers warned them against navigating the immigration system alone. However, the cost of their expertise was prohibitive and, moreover, Tom was confident that he could handle the necessary paperwork himself.
All went well when they were called in for an interview at the U.S. Consulate General in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. They discussed the possibility of Yedid being hit with a three-year ban from the country for his border transgressions. If that happened, Tom would stay in the United States, while Yedid and Teddy would stay with his parents in Mexico. He visited them as often as possible.
She entered the interview nervous, but optimistic. She came back in tears.
Yedid was banned from returning to the United States for no less than 10 years.
“She said, ‘It’s over, if you want to leave me, I understand,'” Tom recalled.
She confessed to crossing the border twice without permission, the second after a trip home to visit her parents. But in the eyes of US immigration authorities, Yedid was a criminal, legally no different from a smuggler or drug dealer. She took Teddy with her to Cuernavaca and Tom returned to Chicago. “Coming home to see Teddy’s toys on the floor,” Tom said, “was the saddest moment of my life.”
Looking at his son’s toys, Tom decided to keep his family together. “I was thinking ‘if I don’t do something, Teddy may never be in the States again,'” Tom said. Faced with such long chances, some try to sneak into the country, but not the Kobylecky. The family decided to carry out a sentence of 10 years of exile and to respect the law.
Few issues elicit as much empathy or anger as unauthorized immigration, making reform of the country’s clumsy system hopelessly elusive. American spouses and parents of unauthorized immigrants, known as mixed-status families, are one of the groups pushing for change.
An estimated 1.4 million US citizens have experienced family separation and 2.8 million more face legal limbo. Family Integrity was part of the Biden administration’s ill-fated US Citizenship Act of 2021, which failed to make progress in Congress. At this point, immigration reform, however unlikely or remote, will almost certainly hinge on bipartisan compromise.
The combined effect of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Accountability Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, has dramatically changed the laws on the immigration. The scope of criminal sanctions has increased, even for minor offences, while legal defenses have shrunk, triggering a wave of deportations and family separations even today. Since then, around 20,000 immigrants have been barred from the country for periods ranging from three years to permanency. It’s hard to know how many people have successfully applied for a visa after being turned down because the US Citizenship and Immigration Service doesn’t make the data readily available. As things stand, the standoff on immigration means that some will continue to live in the shadows and others will choose to survive at the border.
“There is a miscalculation of political capital to be earned or spent to stand up on some of these issues,” said Kali Pliego, the former president of American Families United, a nonprofit made up of families. mixed status. The organization has been lobbying Congress on immigration reform since 2006, most recently supporting the American Families United Act, which would help families like the Kobyleckys by donating to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice the power to exercise discretion. “We would have victories where some politicians think there would be losses,” Pliego said.
In Chicago alone, Tom had time to reflect. He couldn’t stand the idea of living apart from Yedid and Teddy. “Having a son in Mexico who doesn’t know me, it broke my heart to think this could end up happening.” He began looking for jobs along the border, eventually focusing on McAllen, Texas, and Reynosa, in the Mexico area. The area experienced tremendous economic growth in 2008, providing jobs for hard-working CDL truck drivers.
“Knowing that I have a son living in Mexico who doesn’t know me, it broke my heart to think this could end up happening,” Tom said. He began looking for jobs along the border, eventually focusing on McAllen, Texas, and Reynosa, Mexico. The area experienced tremendous economic growth in 2008, providing jobs for hard-working CDL truck drivers.
Reynosa was a crime-ridden industrial town run by criminal gangs that trafficked drugs and people to Texas. Having experienced the streets of Chicago, there wasn’t much he couldn’t handle in Reynosa, or so he thought. But in 2010, the city was engulfed in Mexico’s bloody drug war. Spasms of violence between rival cartels and the military have terrorized the public. When a Walmart burned down in 2015, everyone knew it was the cartel sending the message that even a billion-dollar company wasn’t safe.
“We were hearing gunshots at night and explosions,” Tom said. “We feared for our lives just going to the store to get groceries.” Shootings, kidnappings, hijackings and military patrols formed the backdrop of their lives. The Kobyleckys have learned, as locals do, to follow social networks that warn daily of the most at-risk areas of the city. “We knew when it was safe to leave the house and when it wasn’t,” Yedid said. “It got better when we weren’t scared for our lives to go get groceries at the store,” Tom added.
They settled into a two-bedroom house, about a 10-minute drive from the international bridge. Tom found a job with a trucking company, while Yedid cared for Teddy and their two daughters, Janet and Kimberly, born in 2010 and 2012.
Yedid juggled home and children while finishing her high school diploma. The pressure eventually took its toll. One day she had a fit of vertigo that caused her to fall and hit her head. The doctor told Yedid she needed an outlet to relieve her stress. He suggested that she do yoga. To her surprise, the exercise helped her sleep for what felt like the first time in years. She was so taken with the practice that she became a certified instructor and started teaching children. “It was my first job in Mexico.”
Meanwhile, Tom was struggling to manage his stress. The daily commute over the International Bridge was a festering irritation that became intolerable when peak traffic caused multi-hour bottlenecks. A shouting match with a middle-aged woman who rammed her car into his brought him to the brink of breakdown. Although he managed to calm himself down and maneuver his vehicle out of the situation, there was no doubt that the daily commute was changing him. “I had to become a real asshole,” said Tom. “I did all kinds of things that could have gotten me killed if I had crossed paths with the wrong person.”
The Kobyleckys were not alone in their predicament. They met other families who scraped a life in Reynosa, people like them, living with one foot in two countries.
Bill Rovira, a local reporter, met Tom at a rally in downtown McAllen where he was speaking with reporters about his unfortunate decision to complete Yedid’s immigration paperwork himself. Rovira sympathized with Tom. His wife, an immigrant from El Salvador, had been permanently barred from returning to the United States after she was twice caught entering the country without permission. He also saw how difficult it was for Tom to adjust to life on the frontier. “He’s a Midwesterner,” Rovira said, “he barely spoke Spanish when he got here.”
Tom and Yedid eventually learned the rhythms of the frontier, but their precarious existence carried a unique burden. “We considered coming back illegally,” Tom said. In the end, the Kobyleckys opted to stick it out in Reynosa. “It’s hard to explain how stressful it was to be in a place that you wait to leave for so long,” Tom said. No matter how difficult it was, they made sure to establish a stable family life for their children. Teddy took up karate, while the girls took up piano and theater, and there were trips to the McAllen mall. Before they knew it, their life in exile had acquired all the trappings of an average American childhood. “We tried to be close,” Yedid said, “and show the kids that family comes first.”
A decade passed, but the Kobyleckys never gave up hope of returning to the United States. In the summer of 2017, they started Yedid’s visa application, this time hiring a lawyer to do the job. Part of the process was a psychological evaluation of Tom to determine the extent of the mental anguish he and his family had suffered due to Yedid’s expulsion, and this included his daughter from a previous relationship.
Nothing was safe for the Kobyleckys. Immigration decisions can be capricious and cruel, even for those who do whatever is asked of them. Structural reforms under the Trump administration have made it even more difficult for immigrants to enter the country. And then, in 2020, the application process was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Immigrant visas issued from overseas fell 45% in fiscal year 2020 compared to the previous year. Over the years — three, to be exact — the Kobyleckys have adopted a mantra to comfort and reinforce their vision: “Just a little longer.”
Finally, on October 7, 2021, they were summoned to the United States Consulate General in Cuidad Juárez.
It was a simple, if tedious, process until the interview. Yedid spent four days in Juárez, filling out tons of paperwork and queuing with other visa applicants. It was during one of those dull moments that she was unexpectedly escorted to a row of social workers separated by partitions. Addressing her from the opposite side of a glass barrier, the social worker asked questions, such as details of Tom’s former employer, which to Yedid seemed designed to trip her up. Yedid was already taken aback by the line of questioning, when the social worker informed her that she was missing papers. The document was in a folder of official papers she carried with her, which she might have remembered if she hadn’t been so annoyed.
Tom and Yedid left the consulate stunned. Yedid’s mind flashed back to his disastrous 2008 interview in the same building. “I was in panic mode,” she said. They tried again to gain access to the consulate with the forgotten document, but were ordered to make another appointment which would take weeks to arrange. Their attorney assured them that he would handle the situation with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; in the meantime, he told them to go home and wait for news.
Two months later, at the beginning of December 2021, they receive a thin cardboard envelope. It offered no indication as to its contents, and they could not guess the shape of a passport from its outlines. They were eager to open it, but their friends warned them to wait for a CBP officer to do the honors. If it was indeed Yedid’s visa, and if they opened it without an immigration officer present, they could be denied entry to the United States. “We were freaking out, like, ‘Oh my God, what is this?'” Tom said. The next day, they gave the package to a CBP agent to open. Seeing his visa, Yedid almost burst into tears. “I wanted to cry with happiness,” she said. The family celebrated the moment over breakfast at McAllen.
In all, it took 13 years for Yedid to be released into the country, and in that time life went on. A toddler turned into a teenager, and a pair of twenty-somethings transitioned into middle age. A family adapted to the new realities, even if certain deep desires remained unchanged.
The Kobylecky children lived by the mantra “just a little longer” and they would move to the United States. When that moment finally came, Teddy said goodbye to her friends and then turned to what lay ahead, but Kimberly and Janet were conflicted. “We didn’t know how to feel,” Kimberly said. “We didn’t want to move, nor did we want to stay.” They should leave behind their school, their neighborhood and especially their cherished drama club. On their last day in Reynosa, the girls performed in a Nativity play called The Bet. “It was really sad,” Kimberly said as she said goodbye to their life in Reynosa.
As the family looks back on their first year in the United States, the children have begun to take stock of their new life. They love their schools and made new friends, despite this some of Teddy’s classmates tried to provoke him with racial slurs. “They would call me the N-word for no reason,” Teddy said. And the food leaves something to be desired. “It’s crazy how many foods are fried,” Teddy remarked.
Experiences like these made the children very aware of their Mexican heritage. The house in Reynosa was a haven where Tom schooled them in pop culture and American English. “That dynamic has pretty much reversed,” Teddy said of their home life in the United States, where conversation in Spanish and the aroma of her mother’s cooking waft through the air.
The family currently lives with Tom’s father in the suburbs of Chicago. Their geography has changed. However, making sense of the emotional geography has proven disorienting. “I never felt like we belonged in Reynosa,” Tom said, “but I got here and felt like I made a mistake, like I shouldn’t be here, like if I belonged on the border.”
Putting these impulses aside, they do not regret their decision to leave Mexico. Tom drives a truck again. Yedid is brushing up on her English and looking for work as a yoga teacher. If all goes according to plan, in February they will complete the purchase of a home in Byron, Illinois, a small town about 100 miles west of Chicago.
“When [our daughter] Janet found out we had bought a house, she cried,” Tom said. “We’re all nervous and scared, but excited.”
