Her son was deported under this policy. NC could revive it
I have a strong recall of numbers. This stems from a darkly funny episode that I recall as if it happened yesterday, and a mother who always knew I could handle more than I thought I could.
My family moved from Massachusetts to Virginia in 1978, just as first-grade was ending for me. Up to that point, my school commute had been as idyllic as a Norman Rockwell painting.
Julia, my best friend, and I would saunter down the sidewalk from our homes to our school. With a fair maiden on my right and my NFL-licensed lunchbox swinging insouciantly at my left, I was a prince of the Bay State. But in Virginia, I’d be riding the bus.
I learned this from my mom the night before school, when she told me as an afterthought where my bus-stop was. The opposite of helicopterparenting, this was something — trust — I’d soon learn she’d always place in me.
While a bit apprehensive, I didn’t unduly sweat it. I’d read enough Richard Scarry books to know that the school bus would be big and yellow, and I should probably board when everyone else did. So far, so good.
It was when we arrived at school that the worry began. A dozen identicallooking buses queued in the front parking lot. As my seatmate, an older kid, got up to exit, my voice quivered a little as I posed the critical question.
“How are we supposed to know which bus is ours after school?” I asked. Though big for my age, he looked at me as if I were a kindergartner, and not one destined for academic greatness. “Easy,” he scoffed, “just remember the number on the bus.”
What Magellan had failed to mention was that he meant the simple number on the sign attached to the first-row window on the bus. You couldn’t miss it as you entered, but you could as you exited, which is what I did. As I reached the curb, I frantically scanned the bus from top to bottom. All I saw was “553” painted on the front bumper.
This complex sequence, I assumed, was what I had to commit to memory, lest I end up on the wrong bus and delivered to points unknown. I didn’t learn much in school that first day. I only recall repeating “553” to myself all day long, the mantra that would ensure a safe journey home.
Mercifully, the same sign stayed affixed to the bumper on bus No. 553, so my indirect system worked. The next day I saw the number in the window, realized I was on bus No. 7, and never looked back. But that first day of second grade is when my preternatural ability to recall random numbers was born.
Which brings things back to my mom. I didn’t always learn the ropes the easiest way in my youth. I did learn them, though, often on my own, and generally well. To my mom’s way of thinking, giving me room to fail was a feature, not a bug, of her parenting. Less sometimes is more, for a little fear can cultivate a lot of courage and, ultimately, self-reliance.
I’m grateful that my mom gave me space to figure things out in my own peculiar way. I’ll be sure to send her a nice gift this Mother’s Day. If it gets lost in the mail, I can easily fire off the tracking number.
In 2018, Laura Carnevalini’s son Gustavo was arrested in Charlotte for riding the light rail without a ticket.
After two years of legal battles, paperwork and court hearings, during which Gustavo remained in a federal detention center, he was deported to a country he had never known.
Carnevalini brought Gustavo to the United States from Argentina in 2002, when he was just two years old. At the time of his arrest, he was 18, just a few months away from graduating from South Mecklenburg High School. He spoke both English and Spanish, and active in his church. Charlotte was the only home he had ever known.
Gustavo told the police he was undocumented, and he was taken to jail. But by the time Carnevalini arrived at the police station, Gustavo was already in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The next day, Carnevalini got a call from Gustavo. “Mami, mami, me van a deportar.” (“Mom, mom, they’re going to deport me.”)
Gustavo had been detained under the 287(g) program, a voluntary agreement under which state and local law enforcement agencies can act as immigration enforcement agents. The program has historically targeted people with little to no criminal history, or who commit minor, nonviolent offenses such as traffic violations. Mecklenburg County’s 287(g) program sent more than 15,000 people into deportation proceedings between 2006 and 2018, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.
Gustavo was taken to Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, where he remained for the next two years. During those two years, Carnevalini and her husband tried desperately to obtain legal status for Gustavo. The legal fees piled up, and Gustavo attended hearing after hearing in his orange jumpsuit.
“He had illusions, he had dreams,” Carnevalini said. “And I just let him know we wouldn’t give up on those.”
Just when it seemed like things might work out, the pandemic happened, and visa processing ground to a halt. At his final hearing, the judge issued a deportation order, and in June of 2020, on what Carnevalini describes as “the worst day of my life,” Gustavo was deported.
“It’s easy to retell the story, but to live through it is something completely different,” Carnevalini said. “The mental health issues that went with it, the pills, the doctors, paying for the lawyers. Everything I had to go through — the excruciating worry, the letters that we were writing constantly to ICE, to the judge.”
Now, Gustavo is living the life Carnevalini hoped to spare him from by bringing him to the United States 22 years ago. Argentina is in the midst of an ongoing economic crisis, and although Gustavo has a job, Carnevalini has to send him money to help him afford the cost of daily necessities. She hasn’t seen her son in almost two years, because she cannot afford the cost of travel.
“He always tells me, ‘What am I doing here? I have no future,’” Carnevalini said.
Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden ended the county’s 287(g) agreement following his election in 2018. Sheriffs in many other North Carolina counties, including Wake County, also have ceased cooperation with ICE.
Now, however, state lawmakers want to compel law enforcement to cooperate with ICE once again through the passage of House Bill 10, which would require sheriffs to notify ICE if they cannot determine the legal status of a person charged with certain high-level offenses. It would also require sheriffs to honor voluntary detainers issued by ICE.
Advocates warn that the bill could lead to racial profiling of Hispanic and Latino communities and discourage them from contacting the police. Even people believed to have committed minor offenses, like Gustavo, could be deported.
“I just want to say that with this law, and with what happened to Gustavo, they’re essentially taking away our dream. They took away his dreams,” Carnevalini said. “And I don’t want this to happen to other families, for people to go through what I did.”