Home Again
Left to right, Maximiliano Trejo Sr., Max Trejo Jr., Marcos and his wife. Photo by Kael Alford for palabra
Editor’s Note: In the fall of 2019, palabra debuted, featuring a story about Mexican immigrant Maximiliano Trejo who was caught up in the federal immigration court system and faced deportation. The story detailed how a diverse community of friends and neighbors rallied in support of the dedicated family man who’d become a cherished member of a Dallas neighborhood. This new chapter brings the story almost full circle.
Click here to read the original story, in palabra volume one.
Maximiliano Trejo walked out of the small immigration courtroom a free man. His family and neighbors embraced him. They applauded his attorney. They turned to pray.
“Thank you, God, for not separating this family from Max,” said a neighbor as the group held hands in the lobby.
Trejo wouldn’t be deported from his longtime home near Dallas.
Lawyer Michael Canton nodded to the lobby crowd and smiled. He navigated Trejo through a labyrinth of United States immigration law. He found a way to leverage Trejo’s more than two decades in Texas as evidence the Mexican roofer was not a public safety threat but rather an asset to his community.
Ultimately, a federal immigration judge decided to close the case against Trejo in March. It was an example of prosecutorial discretion–one of President Joe Biden’s pivots from the get-tough policies of his predecessor.
A broken system
Trejo’s case illuminates the chaos of a fractured immigration system with backlogs in the courts and in the federal agency that provides work permits. Both backlogs exceed a million cases. Trejo joins a growing class of immigrants, from those registered for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to those with Temporary Protected Status, who do not have a clear pathway to citizenship but do have valuable work permits.
Trejo is now a semi-documented immigrant.
His case and the immense stress it put on his family were detailed in “Life In The Shadows,” in the inaugural edition of palabra.
Almost three years later, the 50-year-old Trejo can now work without much fear of deportation. But his situation —and the worry it causes his two U.S.-born children— continue to be glaring evidence of a broken immigration system.
Maximiliano Trejo has been living in the U.S. for more than 25 years. Photo by Kael Alford for palabra
New options for judges
Before the latest court dictate, Trejo had already been given a Social Security card and a work permit so he could continue to support his family while his removal case advanced in the immigration courts. The case was administratively closed in March before an immigration judge as an exercise in prosecutorial discretion.
“Removing him from his wife and his two young children will create unnecessary pain and stress to his family.”
“It’s emblematic of most immigration cases in removal proceedings where there are very few options,” said attorney Canton. “That is why we need immigration reform.”
Trejo was stopped near his home in Irving, Texas, in the summer of 2019. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had him on their radar because of a 2017 drunk driving conviction. Trejo had paid his fine and thought that episode was behind him.
His apprehension rallied dozens of friends, neighbors and family members who have stood by the Trejo family since the family patriarch was spun into deportation proceedings. They wrote to the judge, pleading for his release on bond. Among them was the family priest, Luis Arraiza, who penned a letter that said: “To Whom It May Concern: Peace and All Goodness…Removing him from his wife and his two young children will create unnecessary pain and stress to his family.”
His attorney had to provide convincing evidence of Trejo’s good moral character and that he was no security threat. If an even higher bar had been met for “exceptional and extremely unusual” hardship under a process known as cancellation of removal, Trejo might have received legal permanent residency. That would have put him on the much-celebrated path to U.S. citizenship after more than 25 years in Texas.
A case for reform
Trejo’s highly technical legal case could still take some positive turns, depending on the many changes currently happening in the U.S. immigration system. A plan, for example, was set into place recently to provide an 18-month extension on work permits because of the backlog.
But the biggest hope is for an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws, even if the odds of that happening are slim, considering the increased polarization of the issue ahead of this year’s nationwide midterm elections.
The Trejo family altar at their home. Photo by Kael Alford for palabra
Still, amid all the uncertainty, Trejo’s namesake son graduated from high school but had to drop out of the school band where he was going to play the tuba to save money. He has suffered multiple panic attacks from the stress. But the future looks brighter. He’s in college now and wants to be a medical doctor. He also works to help support his family.
Max Trejo tears up when he speaks of the undue stress his son has endured. “I just need to wait,” he said in an interview at his home.
His son still has faith in law enforcement. He attended the city of Irving’s citizen police academy. The certificate of completion hangs near the Trejo family’s home altar that features multiple rosaries, images of multiple Virgin Marys and a light-skinned Jesus Christ.
Max Trejo’s wife still worries about how the family will stretch paychecks. As in the original palabra. article, her name is not being used because she’s undocumented.
“I’ll never lose hope because God is great,” she said.
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Dianne Solis is a staff reporter at The Dallas Morning News and a former foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal based in Mexico. She focuses extensively on immigration and social justice. Throughout her career, she's written about people crossing borders, from tales of refugees from Iraq and Syria, to children from Honduras and El Salvador seeking asylum in Texas. Her passion? Finding the humanity in complex stories. She holds degrees from Northwestern and California State University, Fresno, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
Kael Alford is a photographer, journalist and educator whose work spans issues of political violence, the human relationship to the natural environment, and the tenuous personal relationship to others. Alford photographed the violent conflicts surrounding the dissolution of Yugoslavia from 1996-2002 and beginning in 2003, reported on the impact of the U.S.- led invasion on Iraqi civilians. Alford has published two photography books: "Bottom of da Boot: Louisiana's Disappearing Coast" (Fall Line Press, 2012) - an estranged family album about descendants of her grandmother's Native American and French lineage - and "Unembedded: Four Independent Journalists on the War in Iraq (Chelsea Green, 2005). She lives and works in Dallas, Texas.