May and June.

I had dinner with my father for fathers day. We met up with the rest of the family and had a small dinner. Nothing too fancy. Simple. The way my father is and will always be. After dinner, on the ride back to the city, I had a conversation with my father about immigrating to the United States. My father started talking about how much he used to dread this time of year: May and June. According to my father, this was the time of year when INS came up from the border states to conduct raids on factories and communities where immigrants had a strong presence. He dreaded this time of the year the most because of the heightened risk of a raid, the thought of being deported and losing me in the process. Making a difficult situation worst, my mother was also undocumented and worked in the same factory as my father. A double threat. This was also the time of year when INS would set up checkpoints off of the Kennedy expressway and request proof of citizenship. Fortunately, a raid was never conducted at the factory where my parents worked and they always managed to evade checkpoints. Unfortunately, others were not so lucky. My father recounted an instance where a friend of his was apprehended by INS while standing outside of a bank on Division and Ashland. These are the stories of my parents, of growing up undocumented in Chicago, in the 1980s.