n increasing numbers, Hispanic immigrants are putting down roots in the Roanoke Valley. They're pouring concrete, opening hair salons and filling classrooms. Some employers, meanwhile, are attributing their success to this new labor pool. In this occasional series, The Roanoke Times explores the local impact of the national debate about immigration.
During a busy Friday night dinner waiter Jesus Malaga serves an armload of food to their Anglo customers. Malaga came to America four years ago from Mexico and, like many Mexican immigrants in Roanoke, first landed a job at El Rodeo.
'No great solutions'
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Vanessa Molina-Cedillo celebrated her 15th birthday in May with a quinceanera, an elaborate coming-of-age ceremony marking a Hispanic woman’s 15th birthday. Friends and family, including Kirian Cedillo (center) with her daughter Joselyn (child), packed Iglesia de Dios, a Honduran-run church in Northeast Roanoke. After the ceremony, Estefan Reyes-Claros (right) admires Vanessa from a car window.A school liaison for Roanoke’s Refugee and Immigration Services for two years, Sanchez-Jones has worked with hundreds of Hispanic families. A former missionary, she helps them adjust from a life of chaos to school routines. The leader of a Hispanic community-advancement group, she’s organized documentation clinics with the Honduran and Mexican embassies, and planned motivational sessions for Hispanics in schools.
It was Sanchez-Jones whom the family called when Nohemi’s 8-year-old nephew was held in a Brownsville, Texas, detention center for migrant children last year — for an entire month.
It was Sanchez-Jones who charged $1,600 in plane tickets to her personal credit card so Nohemi’s sister could fly to Texas to bring the boy home. (The family paid her back.)
- 6,460: Last year, the number of underage illegal immigrants from Central America who were detained in the United States while traveling without their parents and sent to government shelters, a 35 percent increase over the previous year.
- 48,000: Of this estimated number of children who enter the United States from Mexico and Central America each year, two-thirds make it past border patrol guards and immigration checkpoints.
- 85: The percent of all migrant children who eventually end up in the United States and have spent at least some time separated from a parent.
- 45: On a typical day in 2005, border patrol agents refused entry of this number of migrants attempting illegal entry into the United States.
“I hear lots of sad stories in my job, but this one felt really personal to me,” Sanchez-Jones said. Her own mother had migrated illegally to New York when she was 6, leaving her with relatives in the Dominican Republic.
They were apart seven years before her mom saved enough from her sewing-factory job to establish legal residency and send for her. “I crossed JFK airport with my papers in hand,” she said.
For months, Sanchez-Jones tried to piece together what happened to Melvin and what, if anything, Nohemi should do. She called Lt. J.J. Guzman of the Kenedy County (Texas) Sheriff’s Office, who advised her to file an official missing persons report. It would pave the way for Melvin’s photo and information to go into an international database for missing children.
The database also allows authorities to match a relative’s DNA sample with those of the hundreds of unclaimed bodies found along the border. (The Texas Center for Human Identification has DNA samples on file for 600 unidentified bodies, many of them migrants who perished in the desert.)
There was a catch, though: Because no one knew exactly where Melvin had gone missing, local police were reluctant to take the report. “It happens a lot,” said Guzman, whose office took 10 such reports of missing migrant children last year. He also referred Sanchez-Jones to the sheriff’s office in neighboring Brooks County, Texas, where 25 bodies were found last year.
Vanessa Molina-Cedillo, 15, helps her parents by cooking dinner every weeknight and doing laundry. Her 8-year-old sister, Diana Serrano-Cedillo, watches her remove the dry clothes from the fence.
Contacted by The Roanoke Times, Guzman confirmed that the information had gone nowhere; Melvin’s photograph and the details of his case were still sitting in a file in his office, he said. He suggested the family try to persuade the Roanoke County Police Department to take the report, but Roanoke County police Lt. Chuck Mason declined because there was no proof that Melvin had even made it across the border, let alone to Roanoke County.
“There are no great solutions to this because of the jurisdiction issues,” Mason said. “And because it’s been so long — I hate to say this — but there just aren’t a lot of attractive possibilities for the resolution of the case.”
Texas detention officials, police officers, local hospitals: For months Sanchez-Jones called everyone she could think of, usually at the end of her workday. Nohemi would drive to her house, buy phone cards to reimburse her for the calls and once even offered to pay her for her efforts. (Sanchez-Jones took the phone cards but refused the cash.)
Nohemi thought of her son as she stood on her feet all day at the Roanoke food-production facility where she works.
She thought of him at night when sleep wouldn’t come.
At first, she prayed for his return and for someone — wherever Melvin was — to find her son and bring him home to her.
But as the months wore on, Nohemi prayed for his soul, too.
The only real peace she’s felt since her son disappeared has come to her sporadically, in dreams.
In one, Melvin stands in their Honduran home, covered in dirt.
“Why are you so dirty?” she asks. He smiles and says he’s been working all day long.
In another dream, Nohemi glimpses Melvin in the distance — she’s not sure where. Just as she spots him, God’s hand lifts both of them up, together in his palm.
The dreams give her joy, she said. “They are proof to me that God is in charge of my life.”
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