​Salvadoran-American shares immigration story, ICE fears

By Bryce Vincent Haugen

By his own account, Edwin Chinchilla is lucky to still be in the United States.

As a 12-year-old Salvadoran, he and his brother were packed into a semi with a couple dozen other people and given fake documents before making the arduous trip from El Salvador to the U.S.-Mexico border at Tijuana with the help of a coyote — common parlance for a human trafficker in Latin America. There, joined by an older woman he pretended was his grandma, he entered the United States for the first and — so far, only — time.

As someone who spent a good chunk of his life as an undocumented immigrant, Chinchilla is very much opposed to the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol, especially in the Twin Cities. He knows at least 15 undocumented people in the Fargo-Moorhead area and is fearful they will be ripped from their homes and lives in this community, where they are just seeking a better life, and sent back to dangerous situations in Latin America. El Salvador, in particular, is ruled in many places by MS-13, a brutal gang that demands “rent” for protection.

“I think ICE is bullshit,” Chinchilla said. “I don’t like (Trump). I’m glad nothing’s happened to myself (now an American citizen) but it’s affected my family, a lot of families. All I want is peace and happiness.”

But the problem is not new. Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden also deported millions of undocumented immigrants, Chinchilla noted, many of them without criminal records.

“It seems now that white people are getting shot, now it’s a big deal,” Chinchilla said, referring to the deaths of protestors Alex Pretti and Renee Good at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis.

Born without a birth certificate in Guatemala in 1983 to a 14-year-old mother and 18-year-old father, Chinchilla grew up on his grandparents' farm near Santa Ana, El Salvador. Hoping to make money to send back for a more comfortable life for their two children, Chinchilla’s parents both left for the United States before he was three years old.

“If I want to make a better life for my family, I’ve got to go to the U.S.,” Chinchilla said. “That’s the mentality that my dad had.”

School kids in El Salvador could be mean, making fun of Edwin and his brother Omar for being abandoned by their parents. His teachers stood in as parental figures. He and his brother bounced from home to home among family members.

“It sucked,” Chinchilla recalls. “It was hard not having my parents. Everybody needs their parents.”

In 1995, Chinchilla’s father — by now remarried, with two more kids and firmly established in the United States — sent for his oldest two boys and paid for them to make the expensive and dangerous trip north. Chinchilla, having worked on the farm growing corn and beans since he was 7, was reluctant to leave everything he knew for a strange new land. But at that age, it wasn’t his choice.

After arriving in California, he flew to New York to reunite with his father, who quickly moved the family cross-country to Arizona. Chinchilla’s stepmom could be cruel, sometimes withholding food for Edwin and Omar, while providing it to their half-siblings. Within a year, the brothers were sent to Moorhead, where their mother lived at the time. The Chinchilla boys enrolled in junior high school there. They had secured student visas, but as Edwin would learn, those were temporary.

When they arrived in Moorhead, they barely knew any English. Now, three decades later, Edwin speaks with only a slight accent, and his English is better than his Spanish.

When Edwin went to the DMV to get a driver’s license in 2002, he discovered his temporary protected status had expired. Without a birth certificate and with a forged Social Security card, he would be charged with felony identity fraud and sent to immigration detention in Grand Forks.

“It was probably the scariest thing ever,” Chinchilla said. “I was illegal this whole time and didn’t know it.”

He was quickly transferred to suburban Sherburne County within the Twin Cities metropolitan area for detention while he waited to see an immigration judge. Chinchilla secured the services of a talented immigration attorney, who secured him asylum status and worked with him through 2007 when he received permanent residency — a green card — under the 1997 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA). This bill provided a path to permanent residency for eligible nationals from El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, Nicaragua and some former Soviet bloc countries.

Edwin became a citizen in 2017, after working with the same immigration lawyer who secured him residency. He started his own construction business and has worked as a manager at various Mexican restaurants around town. He considers Fargo-Moorhead, where he graduated high school and has lived most of his life, home.

“You have no idea what kind of lift this was off my back,” Chinchilla said. “Now I could buy a house, buy a car. It sucks you have to live your life in fear of getting deported. I had tears of joy. It was nice to finally get my citizenship. I feel like I am white. I can walk around freely.”

His brother was not as fortunate. In 2010, after getting caught with a bag of marijuana, Omar was deported back to El Salvador, where he lives to this day. Besides his brother, only distant relatives remain in Central America, and Edwin expresses no desire to ever return to visit.

His grandmother secured asylum status after a shakedown from MS-13 and now lives in Phoenix.

Edwin’s mother lives in Massachusetts near his daughter, who goes to U-Mass. While his father, who now lives in Arkansas, is an American citizen, his mother is still living under temporary protected status or TPS. She narrowly avoided deportation in the first Trump administration when the president revoked TPS for 200,000 Salvadorans before backing down.

While Chinchilla feels fairly confident he won’t be targeted by ICE due to his irrevocable citizenship, he is very concerned about the undocumented immigrants he knows in Fargo-Moorhead.

Two Guatemalan immigrants who work at local businesses were too afraid to speak on the record with the High Plains Reader, but Chinchilla relayed their thoughts. The women arrived in the United States 18 months ago after paying coyotes (or traffickers) $14,000 each to cross into the country.

“They are extremely scared,” Chinchilla said. “Some don’t even show up for work. They send someone before their shift to check to see if immigration agents are in the parking lot. That’s the routine that they have.”

The women understandably “hate Trump,” Chinchilla said. “They’re just here to make lives better for their kids in Guatemala. They’re not here to cause trouble. They’re just here to better the lives of their children. That’s what all of them say.”

ICE is taking things to an extreme level, Chinchilla said. “That’s why everyone’s afraid. It doesn’t look like they care.”

An old friend of Chinchilla’s created a litmus test to see how American he is: What language do you think in? What language do you dream in?

After 31 years in the United States, Chinchilla replied, “I think in English. I dream in English. I claim to be American and I’m proud to be an American.”

Reach reporter Bryce Vincent Haugen at brycevincenthaugen@gmail.com.