Submitted photo Tyler resident Carla Reyes poses with her family in a recent photo. They stand left to right, Alexander Perez, 17, Carla Reyes and Armando Perez. Avelardo Perez, 8, stands in front.

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Those words helped make the Statue of Liberty a symbol of welcome to immigrants. It proclaimed that America stood as a promise of refuge and new beginning.

While most of us live our lives without fear, some live an entirely different existence. Carla Reyes of Tyler can’t always enjoy that kind of comfort, despite her and her three children all being lifelong U.S. citizens.

The tensions that have surfaced in Minnesota in recent weeks eventually take a toll on non-white citizens to a point where the daily lives that most of us take for granted, no longer feel safe.

“I grew up around here,” Reyes said. “I went to RTR from second grade up until senior year. There’s a vivid conversation I remember when a couple of my classmates were bashing Mexicans. There was nothing I could say that would make them realize that not all Mexicans were like what they were saying.”

Although Reyes feels it is important to tell her story, she was hesitant to share it in the newspaper.

“I’m afraid this will put a target on our backs, but I also wanted to bring awareness to what some of us are living because of recent events,” she admitted.

Reyes is raising three boys, Armando, Alexander and Avelardo Perez 18, 17 and eight.

“My 18-year-old is doing online school,” she said. “He is a senior. My 17-year-old is at RTR and is also a senior. He has autism. He was diagnosed with that when he was 3 years old. It is something we’ve been dealing with for his whole life. My 8-year-old also goes to RTR. He is in second grade. As far as I can tell, RTR school has been fine, although I do wish people would speak out a little bit more. They don’t, but I guess I can understand that as well.”

Reyes said for the most part, people avoid the subject.

“I understand that. It is heartbreaking. It’s scary. But there are some of us who don’t get a choice. We live it.”

She said that her children have not experienced many problems at school.

“Not at RTR. My oldest son has been discriminated against in his life. He’s gone to school in Texas and in Marshall and here. This area has been pretty good about not being discriminatory in the last few years.”

Reyes said the RTR School has given her hope that they are offering protection to students if the time comes that it is needed. She says it was a much bigger issue in Texas.

“He didn’t really say what happened to him, but I remember him trying to scrub his skin color off in the shower with really hot water.”

Reyes has five siblings in her immediate family.

“The three oldest came with my parents to Minnesota. They came during the 1990s when the immigration surge was coming to southwest Minnesota. I was about 5 years old when that happened. The three younger siblings were all born in Marshall. My parents have a place in Florence that they have had since my days in the elementary school.”

All six of the Reyes children were born in United States and are U.S. citizens.

“My mom was born in the U.S. and my dad is from Mexico. He came to America back when he married my mom in 1985. Things were a lot easier back then. They gave him the support he needed to become a legal resident,” she said. “As far as my grandparents and my mom’s side, my grandfather is from Puerto Rico. Both of the grandparents on my dad’s side are from Mexico but my grandpa became a U.S. citizen. I would say, technically, my boys are fourth-generation U.S. citizens, because my grandpa, my mom, myself and then my boys — we’re all citizens. I haven’t noticed any ICE activity here in Tyler but we do not go out much.”

Reports, she said, have surfaced of ICE activity in Marshall, however.

“I worry a lot for all my children. Their dad was here illegally and we were actually in the process of trying to get him to be here legally when ICE got hold of him. That completely turned our whole world upside down. This was over 10 years ago.”

ICE deported him at the time and he still resides in Mexico.

“It is harder than people realize to become a citizen. At this time, he doesn’t really have a pathway. It is just a dead end. We tried to argue that he is our sole provider. I have a child who is autistic and he needs both of us. We were in the process of getting married when he was deported during the Obama administration.”

Reyes said the boys regularly get to talk and FaceTime with their father.

“If I were to take my boys to see their dad — just crossing back from Mexico into Texas — it’s always very nerve-wracking. I’m always afraid they’re going to think I’m trying to cross somebody over that is not my child. They look at our paperwork and then they will call off names.”

Reyes worries about how her son Alex, who has autism, would react if he was questioned by ICE and fears ICE would also not know how to react to Alex in such a situation.

“My autistic son tends to answer most questions with, ‘yeah’. They ask him if he’s Mexican and he’d say ‘yeah.’ He doesn’t necessarily understand. Yes, is just his go-to answer. If we were to get stopped, he would maybe answer the questions but if they are trying to keep us apart, he’s not going to be OK with that. He would probably start to feel trapped and more than likely get aggressive because he’s trying to get away from them. He’s not going to understand,” she said. “He would wonder ‘what could I have done that you are stopping me?’ I figure that if that happens and he gets aggressive; they’re not going to understand.

“I’ve tried to take the boys down at least two to three times a year. It is not always a problem coming back, but it is occasionally. I’ve had my trunk searched a handful of times. They will ask my children where they were born. What school do you go to, and things like that. So far, they’ve been OK with me just saying he’s autistic and he won’t be able to answer you, but then they will go on to my older son and ask him questions.

“We haven’t gone down since Trump came into office. They don’t have a state ID yet so I didn’t even want to try. It has become harder to get a state ID in Minnesota. The DMV is not accepting their birth certificates that they currently have. They’ve had them since they were born. One son’s birth certificate is from the city where he was born (in Texas) and the other son’s certificate is from the county he was born.”

She said they’re still waiting for copies of the birth certificates to be sent from Texas.

“I just wanted the picture ID from Minnesota and they haven’t been able to get that yet. So, they didn’t go see their dad in December like I normally would have them do. I just didn’t want to risk them going down without a picture ID,” she said.

Reyes currently lives and works in Tyler. She feels like it would be a comfort to many if a local group could step up to offer help to those who fear that their lives could be upended.

“Most of us are just kind of hoping that Tyler is small enough not to draw any attention. I would just like local residents to know that just because most of the people you know are white, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen here. It doesn’t mean that somebody in your own community won’t be affected,” she said.

Reyes went on to ask that everyone not assume they know everything that is going on in someone else’s life.

“There’s lots of layers to things,” she explained. “Just love thy neighbor. You don’t have to agree with everything they say or do, but most people just want a good life and to feel safe. For some of us, that is not happening right now. We are full of anxiety, and not just for ourselves, but for our children and other family members and friends,” she said. “I think lot of people can just take life for granted and assume that nothing bad is ever going to happen to them. You just never know, however, that your friend of many years could be here one minute and gone the next. Just cherish what you all have with everyone.

“I never thought that being a U.S. citizen, I’d have to go through something like this. I’d like the opportunity to feel safe again. It feels like such a violation on my freedom and I feel like I have to be watching my back and my boys’ back all the time. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel truly safe. Even if this administration is gone in three years, it feels like they just opened up a whole new wormhole that can’t be easily shut.”

— This story was

originally printed in the Tyler Area Tribute