Divided Families

DIVIDED FAMILIES: AN IN-DEPTH REPORTING PROJECT 

NOTE: There are more photos and also video available. We can mail a disc.

A young mother whose son is already beginning to forget his father. Two men who have searched for their missing brother for years. Border Patrol agents who toil miles from their families. These are the some of the people whose lives and whose families are divided by the U.S.-Mexico border. Supported by a grant from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, a group of advanced students in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University set out in fall 2007 to do a semester-long reporting project on divided families. The result, based on more than 30 trips to the border, deep into Mexico and to various parts of Arizona, is being made available to Arizona newspapers via Cronkite News Service. We commend this package to your attention and recommend it for use in your print and online editions.

This advisory begins with a publishable intro about the overall project and an editor’s note that can be included with individual stories. Below that are abstracts and links to each story. Links to photos are at the bottom of each story. This package, which is posted in its entirety at http://cronkitenews.asu.edu/dividedfamilies, is designed so newspapers can run individual stories in print, but we encourage Cronkite News Service clients to carry the entire package in their online editions. Please note there are more photos and also video available. We can mail a disc.

If you have questions about this package, please contact Steve Elliott at steve.elliott@asu.edu. Upon request, we can transmit all of the stories to AP Datafeature points.

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AMERICAN AT HEART: FAMILY STRUGGLES TO START OVER IN MEXICO

NOTE: Video and a Soundslides presentation are available. This story is intended to run alongside the story Divided Families: Left Behind.

By AJA B. VIAFORA and AMANDA SOARES
Cronkite News Service

IXTAPAN DE LA SAL, Mexico _ Hector and Marcos are about as American as two young men can be.

They wear jeans and T-shirts. They are rarely without their cell phones. They like American music and American movies.

But after spending most of their lives in the United States, the two brothers were deported last year along with their mother. They now live in a tiny, dim house thousands of miles from the place they grew up and from the country they consider home.

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DIVIDED FAMILY SERVES CHURCH SOUTH OF BORDER

By BRIAN INDRELUNAS
Cronkite News Service

SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Mexico _ On a Sunday morning at Templo Mikedash, it’s hard to miss the Zavala family.

Efrain, 22, sings and plays his guitar as part of the Methodist church’s band. His brother Damian, 21, leads the congregation in prayers. Another brother, Saul, and their mother, Isabel, sing and pray along.

The family started attending Templo Mikedash while living in San Luis Río Colorado, the Mexican border town that’s home to this congregation of about 100. And they still attend, even though they now live across the U.S.-Mexico border in Somerton, Ariz.

“We have a Methodist church just like five minutes away from our house, but we have to drive 20 minutes to come here to this church,” Damian said. “We have a place to stay here, and we feel like this is our home.”

The Zavalas’ ties to their church and their past have led them to live a life that is itself divided by the U.S.-Mexico border.

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FAMILY SEARCHES FOR BROTHER WHO VANISHED CROSSING BORDER

By AJA B. VIAFORA
Cronkite News Service

MESA, Ariz. _ After spending three weeks trying to cross the border from Mexico into Arizona, 31-year-old Porfirio Montufar had finally made it.

It was a trip that Porfirio, a Mexican national, had made several times before. For the past 13 years, Porfirio had lived and worked in Mesa, Ariz., but he would return periodically to his hometown in Hidalgo, Mexico, to visit his wife, toddler and his mother. After each visit, he would sneak back across the border, dodging the U.S. Border Patrol, and make the 1,500-mile journey back to Mesa.

On this latest trip, Porfirio, who had crossed alone and on foot, had made it to a gas station in Yuma where he called one of his brothers who live in the United States. He asked him to wire money so that he could pay two drivers for transportation to Mesa.

The call came at 3 p.m., July 17, 2004. Porfirio has not been heard from since.

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SOME IMMIGRANTS LEAVING ARIZONA IN FACE OF EMPLOYER SANCTIONS LAW

NOTE: Video and a Soundslides presentation are available. 

By LEAH DURAN
Cronkite News Service

AVONDALE, Ariz. _ In the corner of a living room in a small house that he rents in this Phoenix suburb, Juan Carlos has piled six black garbage bags stuffed with clothes and housewares along with an old vacuum cleaner.

Juan Carlos, 50, said he will donate some of his possessions to a local church and send others to family in Mexico.

Unable to afford a moving truck and unsure of his future in Arizona, Juan Carlos is preparing to leave behind his wife and daughter, both undocumented immigrants, for a new state and a new life. Juan Carlos, who has a worker visa, declined to give his last name to protect the anonymity of his wife and daughter, who are in Arizona illegally.

“My plan is to go to Utah because I see a lot of problems here,” said Juan Carlos, who has put his house on the market.

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DAVID’S STORY ONE OF MANY INVOLVING MEXICAN TEENS CROSSING BORDER

By KRISTI EATON
Cronkite News Service

ZAMAJAPA, Mexico _ When David Tetzoyolt Juarez was caught trying to cross illegally into Arizona from Mexico, he had no money, no ability to speak the language and no idea that his planned destination _ Mississippi _ was actually a state more than 1,000 miles from where he stood.

The 15-year-old only knew that he wanted to make a better life for his family, and he believed he would find it on the other side of the U.S. border.

But just a few minutes after crossing the border, David was stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol. And a week later, he was back living with his mother and two brothers in the state of Veracruz. Back in the dirt-floor house, sharing one bedroom with his mother and two brothers. Back to watching the rogue chickens and dogs roam in and out of the house with no doors.

David is one of thousands of undocumented teenagers caught every month trying to cross into the United States and who are sent back to their homeland. From January through August of 2008, Mexican officials repatriated more than 20,000 teenagers, according to the National Institute of Migration. The majority of them were seeking work in the United States.

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FAMILY HOPING FOR MIRACLE AS TUCSON MAN FACES DEPORTATION

By ANGELA LE
Cronkite News Service

TUCSON, Ariz. _ Victor Napoles, a 21-year-old Mexican national who grew up in Tucson, is facing deportation after losing a case that began with him barking at another man’s dog.

That man turned out to be a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Now Napoles, the oldest of five children and “the man of the family,” is facing the consequences of the impulsive late-night joke that occurred more than a year ago in Tucson. The case shows how, for an undocumented immigrant, even a seemingly insignificant joke can have dire effects.

Napoles’ mother, Angelica Martinez, is terrified that her son will be deported.

At 43, Martinez is the mother of five children _ four of them born in the United States and Napoles, who was born in Hermosillo, Sonora, in Mexico. She and Napoles are in this country illegally.

Losing Napoles would be very hard for his younger siblings, Martinez said.

“(He’s) their father, their mentor … he’s their everything,” she said.

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‘ONION KING’ BATTLES U.S. OFFICIALS OVER RESIDENCY APPLICATION

NOTE: Video is available. The still images for this story are taken from video.

By JORDAN LaPIER
Cronkite News Service

SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Mexico _ He’s called the “Onion King.”

Jesús Bustamante owns the company that farms 4,000 acres of dates, pomegranates, radishes and green onions here, just across the border from Yuma.

Bustamante grew up here in a poor family, attended college to become an engineer and has served as mayor of the city. He and his wife and children own several cars and live in a beautiful home that is taken care of by servants.

Bustamante says he’s just an honest farmer who has had good luck in business.

But members of the U.S. government have a different view. Back in 2002, when Bustamante applied for permanent resident status in the United States, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents said they had reason to believe he was a drug trafficker.

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TECHNOLOGY ALLOWS SEPARATED FAMILIES TO REUNITE THROUGH VIDEO

NOTE: Video is available. This story is intended to run alongside the story slugged Technology-Guatemala City and Technology-Amigo Latino.

By LEAH DURAN
Cronkite News Service

LOS ANGELES _ Feliciano left his home in Guatemala late one night while his son and daughter were sleeping.

He kissed them both, held his wife one last time and wiped the tears from her face. She watched him disappear around the corner, bound for a bus that would take him north across Mexico toward the United States.

It was a dangerous journey — and an illegal one.

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VIDEO CONFERENCING BUSINESS LINKS PEOPLE IN LATIN AMERICA TO U.S.

NOTE: This story is intended to run alongside the story slugged Technology-Los Angeles and Technology-Guatemala City.

By ADRIAN BARRERA
Cronkite News Service

GUATEMALA CITY _ Gabriel Biguria started Amigo Latino video conferencing company five years ago with one office in Guatemala and another in San Francisco.

“It’s basically a business quality service, but what we’re doing is democratizing access for families, so we’re using technology for something good,” he said in Spanish.

Families can go to nearly 40 offices in Latin America, including Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and Ecuador, and connect with their relatives in more than 10 major U.S. cities, including Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, Biguria said.

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MANY HEADED TO U.S. WIND UP AT MAQUILADORA PLANTS ON BORDER

By CODIE SANCHEZ
Cronkite News Service

AGUA PRIETA, Mexico _ Neftali Fuentes left his home, family and everything he knew in Chiapas last fall to seek out the promise of work and opportunity along the U.S.-Mexico border.

After an exhausting three-day bus ride, 18-year-old Neftali arrived in Agua Prieta, Sonora, tired and homesick.

“I was thinking the whole time about what I could do to send money back to my parents and how they were depending on that,” Neftali said.

He settled in with his uncle, aunt and two cousins in a one-bedroom house. Soon after, he began working at Levolor, one of the largest maquiladoras in Agua Prieta.

Neftali is one of the more than 1 million Mexican immigrants who leave their homes in southern Mexico each year for jobs at a maquiladora export assembly plant along the U.S.-Mexico border.

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