A Mexican Couple in California Plans to Self-Deport-and Leave Their Kids Behind

"Lily García was ready for her seventeenth-birthday party well before it started. On a late-summer afternoon in San Bernardino, California, the high-school senior stood in the cool shade of her family's covered back patio, wearing a black tank top and high-waisted jeans. As always, her mother, Rosalinda, had gone all out with the preparations. Traditional multicolored Mexican fabrics were draped across tables and benches. Two men from a party-rentals company were testing the controls for a mechanical bull they'd set up in the back yard. A mini-fridge was stocked with soda, and small bags of Cheetos and Doritos were neatly arranged in a basket. It was two-thirty in the afternoon; her friends weren't even invited until five. "And that's 'Mexican time,'" Lily said, smiling, before heading off to her room to double-check her makeup."

"At the counter of the family's outdoor kitchen, Rosalinda was preparing a huge tub of ceviche, chopping shrimp and cucumbers and limes; it had become a signature dish of hers, and she sometimes sold it to neighbors when the family needed extra cash. Her son, José, the oldest of her three children, sat at the head of a long table. "She seems excited," Rosalinda said to José, in Spanish. "Yeah," José replied, in English, a bit distracted. (The family's names have been changed.) The twenty-eight-year-old, who worked as a scientist at a manufacturing plant in Los Angeles, was studying his laptop screen. He was using Google Maps to look at Mazatlán, a city on the Pacific coast of Mexico. "Mom, do you remember the address of the house where you grew up?" he asked, clicking around."

A family in San Bernardino prepares a seventeenth birthday celebration filled with traditional food, decorations, and a mechanical bull. The mother, Rosalinda, cooks ceviche and sometimes sells it to neighbors to earn extra cash. The oldest son, José, researches the mother's childhood address in Mazatlán on Google Maps while family members chat in both Spanish and English. Names have been changed for privacy. The household balances everyday celebrations and routines with underlying concerns tied to immigration status and future decisions about returning to Mexico once the youngest turns eighteen.

Read at The New Yorker