Alex Belongs Here
Perhaps you’re familiar with Alex & Carly’s story and know Alex had been living in sanctuary at Christ Church in Maplewood since 2017. Perhaps you aren’t sure what it means to live in sanctuary. This series shares the story of how Alex & Carly came to St. Louis, how he was detained by ICE, and how their famly fought to be reunited. To tell a story this intricate with all the details and heart, it needed space. We released the 15-part series starting here, days before leading up to the 2020 virtual week of action for the three-year anniversary of Alex living in the church.
Fast-forward to today: Alex was told he would no longer be targeted for deportation. A month after Biden took office in 2021, Alex’s lawyers got the chance to talk to ICE about how new guidelines would be interpreted and enforced. Like others living in sanctuary, there was now enough protection for Alex and his family to feel comfortable claiming his freedom.
To celebrate their reunification, we headed to Columbia Bottom Conservation Area to take photos with the whole family. #AlexBelongsHere 🌻
“From the moment I saw him, I knew. I was like, ‘This dude is everything.’ I think it was the way he looked at me. And whenever I looked at him, it’s like I saw right into his soul. We met in a restaurant at a get-together spot in Poplar Bluff. One day after work, he was out with his friends and I was out with mine. He gave me the wrong phone number by accident. So I couldn’t call him. Later on, I saw one of his friends at Buffalo Wild Wings where I was a waitress and I asked, “Where’s he at?’ They were joking around like, ‘Where’s who at?’ and then told me, ‘Oh, he’s at work. Being out around a lot of people isn’t his thing.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ Well, a week later, they had their company Christmas party at Buffalo Wild Wings and I happened to look over to see them all. I saw him hunkered down in the booth trying to be out of everyone’s view. That’s when we actually switched real numbers. And our first date was…”
“With the kids. And the other ones were with the kids, too.”
“We both had a child in common. He had his son, Ayden, who just turned two. And I had my son, Caleb, who wasn’t quite two. We decided to meet up all together and that’s where most of our first dates were –– at parks and walking trails and then fishing and at the river. I remember telling my friend, ‘This is it right here.’ And he was like, ‘You don’t even know the dude. You haven’t even gone on your first date.’ ‘I don’t need to. I know.’”
“The first time I met her, I felt like, ‘This is the girl.’ That’s when we started hanging out and dating. And here we are, 12 years later.”
“Alex and I were together for two years before we got married in 2010. After that, we knew we had to establish ourselves because that’s one of the rules when it comes to marrying an immigrant. We applied for his Individual Taxpayer Identification Number number so he could start paying taxes. Then we started putting his name on bills so we could pay those together. We ended up having Xander together, our oldest. And I remember I was telling a friend of mine about how we were getting ready to try to start the legal process but we were running into complications. First, we had been told this, then we were being told that. Then, we paid $300 just to have documents translated. We did all of these things just to find out that it really wasn’t how we were going to be doing things.
My friend gave us the phone number to the Migrant and Immigrant Community Action Project where we met our lawyer, Nicole Cortés. Talking to her, we filed some papers and did background checks to find out that because of Alex’s previous deportation order in 2000, in which he reentered the U.S. unlawfully, he was subject to a permanent bar. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wanted him to leave the country for 10-15 years to be able to apply to come back. And there wouldn’t have been a guarantee that if he left he could come back. It was like, ‘You can leave for 10 years, hang out outside the country, and then return and file more paperwork.’ But if they still say, ‘No, you can’t stay,’ then no is no. Unless they actually detained him, there was really nothing we could do at that time. So, we went back to our lives – back to what we were doing – fishing, camping, working, hanging out with the kids. All that fun stuff.”
“In 2015, Alex’s sister and nephew came to Missouri from Honduras undocumented and they had to go to their first check-in. She was told to do that in Kansas City. So, Alex drove them there and the building was a sketchy warehouse on a dead-end road. Without a name on the outside and with cameras overhead, he was like, ‘I’m not letting my little sister go in there.’ Instead, he walked in first to make sure they were at the right spot and that’s when an ICE officer connected him to his deportation order. Then ICE did the check-in for his sister and nephew and ended up releasing them even though they didn’t speak any English and knew nothing about the city they were in. They just let them go. That’s when his sister got in touch with my dad to let us know. I was at the finance company where I worked when my dad stopped by. He said urgently, ‘I need to talk to you.’ I went outside with him and he told me Alex got detained in Kansas City. Immigration told my dad that my car Alex was driving would be towed if it wasn’t gone by close of business. My reaction was, ‘Oh my God, they have Alex.’ Immediately following was, ‘Where’s his sister and her son? We need to hurry up and get there before something happens to them.’ As I grabbed my belongings, I told my boss, ‘ICE detained Alex. I have to go.’”
“My dad drove with me five and a half hours all the way from Poplar Bluff to Kansas City because I was a wreck. When we arrived, I remember seeing a van pulling up and I looked over to see Alex getting out. I was sitting there knowing my husband – who’s not a mean person, who’s not aggressive, who won’t even kill a spider – and watching him get out of this vehicle in shackles and an orange suit. I was like, ‘What the hell? He’s not some angry madman.’ I went inside the facility and my ignorant self – because I didn’t know immigration law – handed them Alex’s Honduran passport to show proof of who he is. They said, ‘Thanks.’ And we were like, ‘Well, now what?’
I got on the phone frantically with our lawyer and I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t already had a relationship with her. We were contacting people asking them to write letters in support of Alex and getting so many signatures for a petition. We also had to gather medical records from his son’s doctor since his son has Asperger’s and needs his parent, but the doctor didn’t want to help us. After a fight, our lawyer was able to finally get the medical paperwork and it’s been like pulling teeth getting anything from him since. It’s also been hard getting any records from the therapist. When people found out Alex was undocumented, a lot of them were like, ‘We had no idea he was ‘illegal.’’ And it’s like, ‘You grew up thinking that all these Latinos are bad people and they’re not.’”
“About 50 other families living across the United States are in the same situation with a member of their household living in sanctuary. Alex is in touch with a few of them. They have weekly calls together. I’m still no expert on any of this just because information changes so much. One minute, ICE is saying this, the next minute they’re saying something else. Just recently, we were told the ICE office here in St. Louis won’t even accept his paperwork. Then, when we finally got them to accept it, they turned around and denied it. They said because of the pandemic, we can mail in our stay of removal applications. So we did. They received it in the Chicago field office, sent it to St. Louis, and the St. Louis office called our lawyer to say, ‘We have this paperwork here and you need to come to get it.’ The money order was returned to us, there was no denial stamp, no nothing. Just, ‘We’re not accepting it.’ And that was earlier this year when we had 1500 signatures on a petition and ended up getting the mayor of Maplewood and Alderwoman Annie Rice to take it. They were told that even if Alex’s kids or wife were on their deathbed, ICE wouldn’t accept the paperwork until he delivers it in person – in which case, they’d snatch him up in a heartbeat. They’d probably have him on a plane and out of the country before we were even able to take a breath and realize what happened.”
“The community support within St. Louis has been amazing. I’m shocked at the willingness of people to put themselves out there, confront what’s going on, and also call people out when they say something about our situation. The most recent petition I shared on the MapleGood Facebook page and the Moms of Maplewood/Richmond Heights group got a lot of hits. We had so many signatures just from the STL community sharing and their families outside of Missouri would sign. And then people would bring him food when he first got here. That was actually really hard for me though because I’m his wife. I’m not the best housekeeper. I’m not the best cook. I’m not a fancy mom. At home, I’ve tried the whole meal prep thing, like, ‘Okay, Monday we’ll have this. Tuesday we’ll have this.’ It worked for a while, but then I was over it. Still, having other people cook for my husband was so hard for me. I’d ask him, ‘Are you eating? Do you need anything?’ And he’d hate to tell other people, ‘I need this. I ran out of that. Can you get me this?’ So he’d wait until I’d drive up here and then shop for him so he’d have everything he needed. Even then, people wanted to make sure he had home-cooked meals so they’d bring him food. Then, when I finally moved here, everyone was like, ‘Okay, the wife is here. We’ll let her do her thing.’ I don’t want to say the support stopped, because the support was still there. It’s just, now that I was here, I guess people didn’t want to intrude on that part. So then I felt like, ‘Nobody wants to bring you anything or hang out with you anymore because I’m here now? Oh, great. Awesome. Doesn’t anybody want to hang out with me?’ Here he is, the introvert. And here I am, the extravert.”
“What do you like about hanging out with your mom?”
“She’s loved me the best.”
“It was really hard opening that letter and reading it. I didn’t know how to tell Alex or what to say to him. I called our lawyer and sent her a picture of it. I sent her a message again. I started to wonder, ‘Why is she not contacting me?’ Turns out, she was out of the country at the time. A few days later she called saying, ‘Carly, I am so sorry.’ She ended up getting a continuance and bought some time, but Alex had to turn himself in. A month later, when he was supposed to do that, I told my lawyer, ‘We can’t lose him. What am I going to do? We’ve got five kids. There’s no way we can do this on our own.’ And that’s when she connected me with The St. Louis Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America (IFCLA) who told us about their sanctuary efforts.
They explained to us that the group hadn’t done anything like this since the 1980s, and it was very different then. They were just dipping their toes into learning about sanctuary work. They had talked about it that Spring with Christ Church UCC in Maplewood in particular and had their first meeting here. It was wild! My first reaction was, ‘No! I am not doing that. That’s, like, so illegal. That’s horrible! We can’t be running from the Feds.’ They explained, ‘It’s really not though. We’ll tell them where he’s at. They’ll know where he’s at. It’s sanctuary.’ So, I read more into it and thought more about it. I asked Alex, ‘What do you want to do?’ It was a tough decision, but I knew that him leaving wasn’t an option. So we gave the organization a call and told them, ‘Let’s do it.’ That’s when we came here and got introduced to the church.”
“My dad’s from Guadalajara. I remember when he got his citizenship in 2010, it was nothing like what I’m going through. My parents got married, had some years, had some kids, got their paperwork in order. They never used a lawyer. And, then, here we are. I had no idea it was going to be this complicated.”
“We had a pilgrimage march last year for Alex’s two-year anniversary in sanctuary and when I showed up there were so many people gathered where we started outside of the ICE office. I asked myself, ‘Who are all these people?’ I didn’t recognize half of them. The event was an idea some of our supporters put together inspired by a story out of the Bible. You know, the pilgrimage where they walk in solidarity for justice and stuff? I don’t know the whole story. Like I said, I’m new to the whole religion thing. Anyway, we walked seven miles from downtown to the church in Maplewood. There was a mixture of different congregations at the mile markers and they would have signs and bells and water and snacks. Everyone stayed with us and I’m pretty sure there were a few who saw us, parked, and joined us along the way. I used a megaphone to let people know we were coming. And people were coming out of their houses yelling at us in support. I was amazed. We were quite a way ahead of the group when my lawyer told me, ‘Stop for a second. Turn around. Look at this!’ I turned around and there were so many people behind me, I started crying. They were all just walking with us and Alex was waiting for us at the doors of the church. I’m not going to lie, it was the worst walk of my life. I was all sweaty. It was horrible. Seven miles is for the birds. They can just fly it. It’s too much for me. But, I did it! And everyone else did it. And everyone else did it with me for him and it was huge. I definitely saw God that day, for sure.”
