El cuartito
“And what was the purpose of your trip to Rome?” The officer with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection badge emblazoned on his left arm shuffled the sheaf of documents I’d handed over. I shifted my weight, my bags suddenly heavier, and stammered, “Just a vacation, um, with friends … sir.”
I hoped that would be it. This time would be different.
Then he waved me over, saying, “Come with me.” I sighed, my cheeks burning as I looked at my waiting friends watching me follow him down the familiar hallway and into what my family calls “el cuartito” — the room for secondary inspection and further questioning.
I was only 2 and living in Monterrey, Mexico, on 9/11. My mom was in the middle of carefully twisting my short brown strands when the first plane struck, interrupting the morning news, with the now-iconic feed from New York: a mane of smoke, graphite curls, billowing from the North Tower. My dad, hearing my mom’s gasp, rushed over. He had been in that tower a month before, on business.
Though I have no memory of the day, I experience 9/11’s legacy at every border and airport checkpoint in the United
States. Just a week before the attacks, Mexico’s then-president, Vicente Fox, met with President George W. Bush to discuss an historic immigration overhaul. After the attacks, the war on terror and the battle against undocumented migration melded into one; foreigners, or those who looked as such, were caught in the middle. Applying for legal residency became harder, causing backlogs in visa processing that persist today. CBP officers became the “front-line against terrorism” and routine travelers were vetted through terrorist databases.
In the customs line, below TVs looping a video of the president welcoming newcomers, the American flag waving in the wind, it often feels like “innocent until proven guilty” is a luxury only afforded in criminal court.
Yet, I’m here. Like most immigrants, I believe in the American dream. In the eight years my family has waited for a green card, the “cuartito” has been an embarrassing hassle at most. It’s the space beyond the airport doors, where rhetoric blurring migration with terrorism continues, that is the bigger threat to America’s promise.
Regina Lankenau, assistant op-ed editor