I Reunited My Undocumented Mom With Her Parents After 30 Years
Most undocumented people can’t travel to their home countries to see their aging parents one last time
Luis Cortes Romero, 31, calls his mother Lourdes his hero. A 50-year-old domestic worker, Lourdes came to the U.S. at the age of 19 and worked nonstop to give her children a better life than the one she had in Mexico. But as an undocumented immigrant, she also sacrificed seeing her own parents for the past three decades. It’s another form of family separation: Most people who migrate without authorization are unable to amend their status, which means visiting their home countries and aging parents would lead to them being banned from returning to the U.S. Today, Cortes Romero is an immigration lawyer and one of the co-counsels who argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court against ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, of which he is a beneficiary. Last August, after more than a year trying, he was finally able to reunite his mother and grandparents in the United States. A video of the encounter went viral soon after he posted it on Twitter by chance this week. This is the story behind the emotional reunion, as told to GEN’s Andrea González-Ramírez.
