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Imagine leaving your house in the morning and wondering if you’ll make it back that night.

Imagine living somewhere for as long as you can remember, then suddenly being ripped away from your loved ones without warning.

Imagine being afraid to talk to the police, to go to a health clinic, to make a wrong turn on the way to the grocery store.

Imagine fear.

To be an undocumented immigrant is to live in a constant state of worry. And with high-profile cases of massive stings and longtime residents finding themselves caught up in a crackdown, those fears are legitimate.

The federal government removed more undocumented immigrants in the past year than any in history — nearly 350,000 in the 12 months ending Sept. 30.

And increasingly, the federal effort is being aided by a new program that essentially deputizes local law officers as federal immigration agents.

To be sure, those on the side of getting tough on illegal immigration note that immigrants put themselves in that position. That no one forced them to come here.

But advocates for immigrants say the crackdown is driving immigrants into the shadows, making them a separate community and fostering crime and alienation.

And, they say, they came for a better life, just as the ancestors of current citizens did. If there were any way to come legally, they would.

Regardless of the debate, the reality is that they are here.

Living in fear.

“Most people think about it every single morning,” one immigrant says. “They think, 'Let me come back to my house tonight.’ ”

A family separated

Moises Campos Palencia was on his way to realizing the American dream — a wife, a young daughter, a business he started from scratch.

Until it all fell apart at a traffic light in High Point a few months ago.

A police officer pulled him over, saying he’d turned left on red. The next thing Palencia knew, he was in a detention center in Georgia, awaiting deportation.

Although he had lived in the United States since he was a boy, brought here by his parents, Palencia hadn’t been able to attain citizenship, despite his efforts.

He planned to try again as soon as his wife obtained her citizenship — which she did a few weeks after he was detained.
Now their lives are turned upside down. Palencia has been deported.

His wife, Nayelli Rojas Campos, worries whether she’ll be able to keep up the business, a car audio store on High Point Road.
Even more, she worries about their daughter.

“She tells me, 'Mommy, I miss my daddy,’” she said.

The family’s story gives nightmares to countless undocumented immigrants across the Triad. The federal government estimated that nearly 400,000 undocumented immigrants were living in North Carolina in 2007.

One such immigrant, Carlos, a man who came here from Mexico and now lives in Greensboro, said that recent events such as the imminent deportation of Marxavi Angel Martinez, an Alamance County librarian discovered after she visited the health department, have cranked up the paranoia.

The librarian’s arrest came on the heels of a much-publicized roadblock Aug. 8 that many worried was meant to snare undocumented immigrants.

“People were scared,” said Carlos, who did not want to reveal his real name. “There was panic within the Hispanic community.”

Many fear losing all they have built here.

Carlos came here more than a decade ago after he lost his job in Mexico and could not find work. Like immigrants from England or Ireland in previous waves of immigration, he saw opportunity in the United States. There was no way to come legally.

“There was only one goal,” he said. “Work.”

At first, life was brutally difficult. He took off one day a month, spent nights sleeping in the back of a restaurant, even in a van, until it grew too cold.

He decided he needed to learn English after being embarrassed at a McDonald’s when he couldn’t order a hamburger without onions, so he taught himself by watching CNN.

He now has built himself a decent life. He lives in a nice house he has gradually furnished. He is respected by co-workers. He loves to read history, he dreams his daughter will go to college, he wonders if he’ll see his dad, who is ailing and still lives in Mexico, again.

And he could lose it all in a moment. He never stops worrying.

“Every day,” he said.

Carlos mentions a man who called a law enforcement agency for help, gave a false name and wound up being deported.

“When people read that, people get scared,” he said. “I’m not going to call the police.”

Right now, the looming issue for Carlos is his driver’s license, which expires this month. The state has made it much more difficult for undocumented immigrants to get licenses, and he is not sure what he will do when it expires.

“If we have to go to work, we have to drive,” he said.

He’s a careful driver, with no accidents. But even getting in a crash that isn’t his fault could be disastrous.

“I’ll be watching my mirrors all the time,” he said.

Living in the shadows

Kathy Hinshaw gets the calls all the time now.

Is it safe to go to Walmart? Is it safe to see a doctor?

Hinshaw, who came here from Peru, works at UNCG’s Center for New North Carolinians, where she helps immigrants trying to make their way in a new country.

Increasingly, she talks with undocumented immigrants who are scared they’ll be rounded up.

“People are calling and saying, 'Is it safe for me?’ And I don’t know,” she said. “Right now, people are living in constant fear. They are driving only to work. And that is no life.”

Ultimately, that fear is driving the immigrant community into the shadows.

“You think about what I’m going to do tonight, what am I going to cook? But they are thinking, 'Are they going to catch me here?’” Hinshaw said. “The more that fear increases, the more the community will withdraw from participating and being part of the society.”

Traditionally, immigrants to the United States have blended into society. That process hasn’t always been smooth or easy, but over time, it has helped an astonishingly diverse population find common ground — if not necessarily the melting pot of myth, at least a tossed salad.

That has helped the United States avoid the dangerous divides found in some other countries, where huge immigrant communities exist almost completely separately from the societies they inhabit.

Problems arise when young people feel alienated, as if they have no options and no respect. And that’s exactly what is happening here now.

“They are receiving the message that you don’t belong here, that you are nothing,” Hinshaw said, adding that such hopelessness can give birth to crime and gang activity.

At the same time, immigrant advocates say, the crackdown is driving a wedge between immigrants and law enforcement.

Many worry that if they interact with an officer, even as a victim or witness of a crime, they could be deported.

That fear makes immigrants easier targets, advocates say, because criminals may reason that they can prey on them without consequence.

At the same time, the possibility of being picked up by authorities creates a heightened sense of anxiety.

Many who want a crackdown on undocumented immigrants employ a strategy to make life as unpleasant as possible, said Mark Sills, executive director of FaithAction International House, a nonprofit that works with immigrants.

Ultimately, that strategy accomplishes little but creating misery, he said. For immigrants fleeing places where they can’t find work, can’t provide for their families, there is little choice but to endure the indignities, Sills said.

Thanks to rich subsidies for American agribusiness, rural farmers in developing countries can’t compete on the global market and find themselves out of work.

“They can’t survive where they are if they’re going to feed their families,” Sills said. “And there’s only one direction. They can’t go west. They can’t go south. They can’t go east. They can only go north.”

Hoping for change

In many ways, the immigration debate in the United States has calcified in recent years. The failure of immigration bills to pass has left both sides in a bitter stalemate.

That might soon change.

With a new president and with changes in Congress, major immigration legislation likely will be debated in the coming months.

While the particulars — amnesty for current residents, a “guest worker” program, more wall-building — will be debated, no one on either side seems happy with the status quo.

Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes said the federal government needs to do more. More Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are needed, he said, and we need to do a better job processing those who want to come.

Jeremy McKinney, an attorney who specializes in immigration law, wants to see a major rethinking of immigration policy.

“The government is being asked to enforce a fundamentally flawed set of laws,” he said.

Despite common perception, for many immigrants, there simply is no way to come here legally, he said. Forget waiting in line — for many, there is no line.

The country once had a guest worker program that worked well, McKinney said. Immigrants could come, work, then return home. In the meantime, they didn’t have to live in fear.

Even many law enforcement officers want changes.

Randy Jones, a spokesman for the Alamance County Sheriff’s Department, said he strongly opposes amnesty, but that the citizenship process needs to move faster.

“None of us opposes having an easier path to citizenship,” Jones said. “It needs to be streamlined.”

Regardless, there still will be the issue of what to do with those who currently live here illegally.

Carlos, the longtime resident, remains optimistic that immigration reform will soon come.

“Hopefully, one day, I could become legal. I could become a citizen,” he said. “I’d be ready for it and I’d be proud to fit myself into society.”

In the meantime, he hopes he doesn’t get caught. He wants to stay. And he wants a life free of fear.

This is home.

“I love this country so much. American people are some of the most kind people in the world. Now, I have a lot of friends. American people,” Carlos said. “Good friends, that I really consider as my brothers.”

But there’s always that fear.

“It’s not easy living under the shadows.”

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or at jason.hardin@news-record.com