For more than 20 years, Rosa has worked as a nanny in New York City, helping raise children who still visit her when home from college. Now, despite continued demand for her childcare services, she’s planning to leave the country. Like her partner of 16 years, a construction worker, she will self-deport—he to Colombia and she to Guatemala. “Then he can come visit me,” she said.28
“At least we will not have that feeling that someone is chasing us, coming after us. Because that’s how we feel, both of us,” she said. “Every day on Spanish TV the ads say, ‘If you’re illegal, we’re going to get you. We’re going to kick you out.’ That’s the message we hear every day. Every day. It affects you.”
“It’s like a little drop of water hitting on a stone. Sooner or later it starts making a hole,” she said. “People don’t know what we’re going through.”
Before coming to the United States, Rosa was a single mother of two in Guatemala. She taught at a language school for tourists and sold jewelry for a large U.S.-based company. Then a recession hit, leaving her without work and a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old to feed. She accepted an invitation to join a childhood boyfriend and U.S. citizen living in New York, leaving her children behind with her mother until she could secure visas for them later. But once in New York, her boyfriend was not able to support her and her tourist visa expired.
“I had nothing, so I began looking for work,” she said. As an undocumented woman, she followed a common path, taking jobs as a nanny and house cleaner. “It was good money and I was sending money back to feed my kids,” she said.
She has heard talk of moms who smuggle their children across the border. “But I wouldn’t do that. It’s too hard, too dangerous,” she said. “I wanted to do it the legal way, but I couldn’t. I’ve been talking to lawyers since I got here.”
Her children remained her top priority. “I couldn’t go back because we needed the money. They needed the money to go to school.” Now grown and still in Central America, her son is an engineer and her daughter is graduating with a law degree. They were able to bypass the extreme overcrowding in public schools and the guns and violence that embroils so many teenagers.
“You have no idea how many nights I cried because I miss them, because I want to hold them,” she said.
But Rosa was there for her American “kids,” including a dozen children, across four families, whom she cared for over many years. It was another reason she stayed in the country so long: she felt an obligation to her American families, families that needed two incomes and depended on immigrant caregivers like her for accessible and affordable childcare. Many of the children became attached to her, and she to them. She liked—continues to like—the work.
“I have to be honest: I love children,” she said. “They are so curious, so creative. They are really honest with you, with their feelings, with their facts. And they learn from you.”
Rosa always paid income taxes, using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, contributing to programs like Social Security and Medicare that she will never benefit from, even if she were to stay in the United States. She does not drink, does not use drugs, and has never been arrested. “I’ve never been in any trouble,” she said.
In September, Rosa was still going to work, fulfilling her commitment to a family. But she said she couldn’t endure the stress and fear much longer. She tried to avoid rush hour and changed the route she took to and from work. She called a taxi driver friend for ICE alerts. Sometimes he’d give her a ride.
“It’s not fair that people who come and work are threatened, scared, humiliated. I would like the freedom to do my work with happiness as usual, without the worry of who is going to take me away, who is going to hurt me and treat me like an animal,” she said.
“I’m sad to go home, but we have to have freedom, not live in a cage.”