Cleaning up ‘sunup to sundown’
tel’s large glass front doors. “But in all that’s going on, the first stop belongs to God.” 11⁄2-bath home. “But she had two knee surgeries, and now nothing can stop her.”
Every elevated piece of furniture is covered with household items.
Benjamin was in bed when the water came rushing into her home. She remembers stepping out of bed at 5 a.m. into the cold water on her bedroom’s tile floor.
She was stuck in the home for days with her daughter and Imana. She finally reached her cousin, a firefighter, who sent help.
“They backed a dump truck in, put a ladder down and I climbed in,” she says. “We took off and it went in a ditch. Then another truck had to get us and take us to the convention center.”
It’s now 3:30 p.m. and time for Neal to return to her home across town in the Parkway Forest neighborhood. She returns to her home to find her son and husband cleaning up.
“I broke down last night at the house and cried,” she says, her eyes now fixed on her front lawn with a large pile of broken and soaked furniture from her home atop it. “It’s so much.” Back at the hotel, Benjamin is alone in her room dressed once again in her pink pajamas and ruffled sleeping cap.
It’s just before 10:45 p.m., and she is holding a set of colored pencils in her hand. Her granddaughter’s coloring book is on her stomach.
“My granddaughter gave this to me,” she says as her granddaughter runs barefoot into the room behind her mother.
Benjamin’s other daughter enters the room shortly after. She barely managed to grab some food before restaurants closed for the night. Because of the flooding, there’s a curfew.
Malbroue reminds her mother that her former company gave her grant money for the hotel and that the money has run dry.
They need to check out within the next day or two.
“We’ll just stay with my husband in southeast Houston,” she says. “We’ll all squeeze. There’s no telling how long it will take for the insurance companies to come . ... So much more work to be done.”
The little girl, a sweet child of few words, looks up from an iPad she holds.
Her grandmother then pulls one of the colored pencils from the stack still clutched in her left hand and lifts the coloring book from her stomach.
Its title is now visible:
“I love coloring,” Benjamin says softly. “It’s so relaxing.”
Her granddaughter, now under the covers in the other bed, turns her head to her grandmother, smiles and says, “Me too.” their protective status will make getting an education more difficult to afford.
Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, said DACA enrollees are ineligible for federal financial aid. That leads many of them to work side jobs to pay for school — jobs that will go away once they lose their work permits. Undocumented immigrants could qualify for DACA if they served in the military. It’s unclear whether they will be able to continue doing so once DACA is rescinded. The Defense Department did not respond to questions about the number enlisted or what would happen if their protective status expires. The Department of Homeland Security said it will not target former DACA enrollees without a criminal record. But the department has been arresting more undocumented immigrants who have not committed crimes.
In January, the last full month of President Obama’s term, about 18% of undocumented immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had no criminal record. That percentage has increased each month of the Trump presidency, reaching 30% in June.