Marcos Doesn't Live Here Anymore (2019)

According to Time magazine (July 13, 2018), in the US immigration system, "more than 11,800 children, from a few months old to 17, are housed in nearly 90 facilities in 15 states. They are being held while their parents await immigration proceedings or, if the children arrived unaccompanied, are reviewed for possible asylum themselves." In fact, this is a billion-dollar-a-year industry. This feature length PBS "Independent Lens" documentary film examines that immigration system through the lens of a single couple that are separated by deportation. Elizabeth Perez is a ten-year veteran of the US Marine Corps who served in Afghanistan. Her husband Marcos, an undocumented worker, was deported back to Mexico in 2010 after he ran a yellow light and was turned over to ICE. For five years their legal efforts to reunite have failed. Should they continue to fight the system after submitting seven petitions? Regather in Mexico? Move to Canada or even Australia? Elizabeth, Marcos and their children exemplify the human toll that's taken on the 12 million undocumented immigrants who still live in the shadows of a badly broken system. For more on this subject see my reviews of the two movies El Nortre (1983) and Sin Nombre (2009); and the two books by Lauren Markham, The Far Away Brothers; Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life (2017), and Francisco Cantú, The Line Becomes a River; Dispatches From the Border (2018).

Dan Clendenin: dan@journeywithjesus.net