The Price of Being in the U.S. Illegally

Spaniard Robert Fortea spent 54 days in a detention center in El Paso (United States) because of an expired visa

32-year-old Robert Fortea never thought that he would be sharing a room with a Guatemalan who had fresh bullet wounds in his abdomen. Not even the macabre account of his bunkmate would help amuse him in the Detention and Prosecution Center in El Paso, Texas, where he was detained for 54 days and 55 nights while awaiting to be deported. For almost three years, the Spaniard worked for the Art Students League of New York and was also a technician for a Broadway show, even though for the last ten months he lacked a valid visa. “The one I had expired and I didn’t renew it for economic reasons. I was not able to leave the country again for three months,” he explains during a telephone conversation from the recovered tranquility of the Barcelona mountain town of Valldoreix.

“I paid a high price for being an illegal,” Robert reflects. The police detained him, along with an Israeli friend who also didn’t have a visa, while they were traveling on a bus headed for Las Cruces, New Mexico. They had already traversed the better part of the United States. It was his final destination before his planned returned to Spain. “We arrived at the prison at three in the morning. They made us take a cold shower and then they put the both of us in a provisional cell,” Robert recounts. It was at that moment he thought: “This is going to be hell.”

And it was, judging by the young man’s account. Although he explains that the people in charge of security at the center treated him “Harshly but without violence,” gave him three meals – “Disgusting” – and an hour of light per day, although not always- “It depended on whether the officer felt like it.” During his daily 60 minutes in the courtyard, Robert began to do weight training to pass the time for the first time in his life.

By the end of the second day, the provisional cell for two turned into a barrack for dozens of prisoners. The appearance: metal lavatories in public view and bunks for 65 detainees of 35 nationalities. The majority were Mexicans from the cities of Juárez or Tijuana, two Mexican border cities. The most terrifying fact: one day a Guatemalan bunkmate showed him fresh bullet wounds that had pierced his abdomen. “And later he told me that he had killed those responsible,” Robert recalls. Desperation overwhelmed him: “They were treating me the same as criminals and delinquents. I was aware that I had broken the law, but all of it felt like a nightmare”.

The Business

The authorities informed Robert that he would be deported in two or three weeks. When he had been there for almost three weeks, the young man called the Spanish consulate in Texas where they told him his flight was going to depart the following week. However, it didn’t because the escort of the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) that was supposed to accompany him to Atlanta, where he was going to catch the plan to Spain, had become sick, which meant the process began all over again. “I was overcome by a horrible sensation. I broke out in a brutal sweat that ran down my back,” Robert remembers. The second opportunity also failed; they canceled the flight again. “I thought I was going to stay there forever. It was obvious that they were in no hurry to let us go.”

Experiences similar to that of Robert’s happen to 500,000 people a year in the United States. According to the newspaper the “New York Times,” 47% of the detention centers where immigrants wait to be deported are privately owned. The government pays the businesses responsible 10,176 dollars a day per detainee. Within the last four years, the United States Congress has doubled the expenditure to 2.4 million dollars last October as part of a 5.9 million dollar package directed towards enforcing immigration laws.

A Sausage for Christmas

Robert spent Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve imprisoned. On Christmas Day, he ate a loaf of bread and a sausage. There was no celebration, nor was there one on New Year’s Eve, when he went to sleep at 11 at night. His family was under the impression that Robert was still in New York. A friend was the only person aware of his situation. The stress of waiting made it difficult for him to get to sleep. Finally, on the third try, the day arrived to leave Texas. The escort picked him up and accompanied him to Atlanta, where he waited for the plane that was going to deport him to Spain. “In some moments, it was like I was in “The Trial” by Kafka, without a sense of reality,” he now reflects, two weeks later from his room in the mountains. He will not be able to enter the United States again for the next five years.