Jupiter Residents Hidden In Plain Sight

By Linnea Brown of Hometown News

 

Like millions of others, they laugh, cry, love and work hard to put food on the table. Yet they live in indescribable fear and worry.

Below are two stories vastly different, yet seeking the same goal: a permanent home in the United States.

Prudencio's story

Jupiter resident Prudencio Camposeco has never broken a rule in his life.

The 34-year-old speaks English confidently and easily, owns his own business in Jupiter, pays taxes and spends most of his free time organizing prayer groups and choir activities for St. Peter Catholic Church on Indian Creek Parkway.

But even though Mr. Camposeco has lived in the U.S. legally since 1991 - without so much as a blemish on his record - a nationwide attempt to clear out asylum-seekers has got him scrambling to find a lawyer.

Originally from Jupiter's "sister city" of Jacaltenango, Guatemala, - where an estimated one-third of the local Hispanic immigrant population hails from - Mr. Camposeco spent the first half of his life bearing the weight of religious and political persecution during his country's bloody civil war.

He learned the importance of altruism from his father, a rural schoolteacher and volunteer attorney whose advocacy work forced the family into exile, he said.

"As a child, I remember my father coming home beaten up and without shoes," Mr. Camposeco said. "Our family had to leave the village and lived in complete fear."

Following in his father's footsteps, he obtained a teaching degree in primary education, but felt so threatened by guerilla warfare that he knew he had to leave, Mr. Camposeco said.

"I couldn't live in a country like that. I tried, but it was not possible," he said.

In 1991, he flew to California and visited a notary, who helped him file for political asylum.

Several months later, he received a government-issued work permit, along with a notice that officials would contact him for an asylum interview.

"With that, I was calm. I was able to work and obtain a Social Security card and driver's license," he said.

He spent seven months working for a Dutch family in California for $125 per month before moving to Jupiter, where his brother had sought asylum.

As the months turned into years, he built a life in Jupiter. He joined a church, learned English, started his own landscaping business and became a frequent community volunteer.

And finally, more than 15 years later, he received a letter with a date for his long-awaited interview for review of his asylum status in early 2007.

Overjoyed, Mr. Camposeco went to the interview alone, certain that he would be granted citizenship.

Instead, he learned he is being deported.

Like hundreds of thousands of other Guatemalan refugees who sought asylum from the war in the early 1990s, the U.S. government is now attempting to send him back, on the basis that the fighting in Guatemala ended more than a decade ago.

Mr. Camposeco, who has now been placed in "removal proceedings," has hired an attorney.

However, he feels stunned by his lack of options, he said.

"I have been here for 15 years without being able to see my family," Mr. Camposeco said. "This kind of situation causes psychological issues; not being able to go back, then living here so many years and then being (denied legal status). I want to cry because I know it is very sad."

Even if he decided to go against the ruling and stay, a future in the U.S. without documentation seems bleak, he said.

"If I don't have a work permit, then I can't get a driver's license. That means I can't have my business anymore; the business I've worked so hard to build," he said.

But the extreme poverty and violence in Guatemala seems equally hopeless, Mr. Camposeco said.

"What am I going to do if I go back there?" he asked.

He also feels frustrated by the general public's ignorance about the conditions facing asylum-seekers.

"It's not that we don't want to get a green card, it's that we can't," he said. "It's not like we had any other options. It's not like we had a guest worker program."

Mr. Camposeco lives in an apartment in Jupiter with his brother. They both regularly send money home to Guatemala to help their family.

"After all this time, I was actually thinking about buying a home. But after this situation, I'm thinking, 'Why buy a house if I don't know if I'll be able to stay?'" he asked.

So Mr. Camposeco now finds himself - after spending most of his life feeling like any other soon-to-be U.S. citizen - investing in an attorney in the hope that maybe, just maybe, he'll be allowed to stay.

Carmen's story

She has a sweet smile, creamy skin and looks much like any other young, American mother.

She drives her daughter to school, buys groceries for her family and blends in easily with other employees at the fast food restaurant where she works.

But unlike other mothers, Jupiter resident Carmen Felipe, 24, cannot remember a time when she wasn't living in gripping, gut-wrenching fear.

For some, that level of fear can be difficult to imagine. But for Ms. Felipe - who is one of many undocumented Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants living in Jupiter - it's reality.

Born in the midst of a known massacre and genocide in Ixcan, Guatemala, she grew up in extreme poverty, surrounded by violence.

"When I was 8 years old, they tortured and killed my uncle. The killing, the blood, it was terrible," Ms. Felipe said.

Since she lived in a remote northern village, she never went to school, spoke only the traditional Mayan dialect of her family and watched her infant brother die of malnutrition.

"There was no medicine, no hospital and no place to take him. There was a lot of hunger," she said.

Because most villagers owned only one set of clothes, they were often forced to wash their clothing and put it back on, still wet, Ms. Felipe said.

Things changed in 1996, however, when a Spanish-speaking stranger appeared in the village and promised work for anyone willing to go with him.

She and two other young women accepted.

She was 15.

"We had to (leave)," she said. "We didn't know where we were going. We just knew we were going somewhere that had work. Somewhere better."

Crossing the Guatemalan/Mexican border by bus, they spent a week in Mexico purchasing essentials: a pair of jeans and sneakers for each of them, water and a long loaf of bread.

"I had never seen jeans or sneakers before in my life. I only knew my traditional Mayan outfit," she said.

Though the women still didn't understand the magnitude of their journey, they set out at 2 a.m. with the stranger to cross the U.S. border.

Later that day, gun-toting border patrol officials stopped them and brought them to an office for questioning.

Without understanding English or Spanish, Ms. Felipe said she felt terrified.

"I thought, 'I came all this way to get away from violence and now it's here, too?'" she said. "I was very scared. I didn't understand what was happening."

After being released back to Mexico, the foursome spent the night in a hotel and started over again the next morning.

This time - after walking three days and four nights without stopping - they made it.

Through the smuggler's arrangements, they spent the next week hiding in a California home, unable to leave.

They were then ushered into the back of a truck with other refugees, where they were forced to lie down, covered with a blanket, while the driver drove nonstop to Jupiter.

"For three days, we could not go to the bathroom, eat, drink or move," Ms. Felipe said. "The only time the truck would stop would be to get gas. It was very cold and difficult."

When the group arrived in Jupiter, one of the refugees was hospitalized after becoming paralyzed from the harsh conditions, she said.

The three women were then locked in another house, this time in Jupiter.

Their smuggler chose the oldest one as "his," and soon, the expectations became apparent.

"He told her, 'If you stay with me, you'll have food. But if not, you won't,'" Ms. Felipe said.

However, even as the other woman was assigned to a man, Ms. Felipe still didn't understand the underlying intentions until the night a stranger came home drunk and raped her.

"He did whatever he wanted to, and I cried," Ms. Felipe said. "I didn't even know what sex was. My mother and father never told me."

She became pregnant, which the man - a legal U.S. citizen from Mexico - used as an entrapment tactic, she said.

"He would say, 'Where else are you going to go? You have no one here. They'll catch you and send you back,'" Ms. Felipe said.

This began a cycle of emotional and physical abuse that caused her daughter to be born two months early, she said.

"He said I could not talk to anyone, and I couldn't tell anyone what was going on because I was scared," Ms. Felipe said. "I wanted to leave him, but I had a little baby and no place to go."

When he finally allowed her to work, he found her a job picking up garbage for the construction company he worked for.

However, the abuse worsened, and when her daughter was nearly 2, she reluctantly agreed to the father's suggestion that they send the child to live with his family overseas.

"I thought, 'Maybe my little girl will be better off with them than (here),'" she said.

She also finally left her abuser.

"I said, 'I would rather die than live with this man, and I don't have a child here to keep me there anymore,'" she said. "I looked for a new job by myself, and a friend took me in."

Ms. Felipe spent the next three years working as a hotel maid, slowly learning English and Spanish and remaining terrified of her child's father.

When her daughter was 5, her father brought the child back to the U.S. in an attempt to win Ms. Felipe back.

She refused, ignoring his repeated threats of reporting her undocumented status to authorities. He eventually stopped when he met someone else.

Since then, she, too, has fallen in love with a man from El Salvador and started a new family.

They live together in Jupiter with their infant daughter, who is nearly 1, and are poor, but happy.

Ms. Felipe is currently attempting to get full custody of her older child, now 9.

Ms. Felipe recently completed two months of abuse counseling with a therapist, working through her past and gaining confidence.

Though she never went to school, she has the willingness to work and succeed, but she is forced to work for a popular fast food chain where she has no rights and they use her undocumented status against her, she said.

They pay her "what they want," and refuse to pay more because they tell her they don't have to, she said.

"I want to go to school and get a better job to provide for my children - who are old enough to start asking for the things their friends have - but I don't have any rights," she said. "My new husband and I would like to own a business and have something that's ours in this country, but we can't do that without papers. We can't improve ourselves."

The couple owns a car, but Ms. Felipe cannot legally obtain a driver's license or insurance. She feels terrified anytime she drives anywhere.

It's like being stuck in a nightmare, she said.

"I came from my country to have freedom and live without fear, but now I'm still not free and I'm still full of fear," Ms. Felipe said.

And perhaps hardest of all, she cannot board a plane to fly home, she added.

"I haven't seen my family in nine years. My mother had a stroke, and I haven't been able to go see her," she said.

But, like millions of others, she is stuck. And should Ms. Felipe return to Guatemala, she fears her U.S.-born children will suffer as she did.

"What are we going to do if we go back to Guatemala? Return to living in poverty?" she asked. "I want them to have it better than I do. I don't want them to suffer like I've suffered."

So, for her children's sake, she'll remain invisible and keep hoping for a chance at freedom.