The pandemic has thrown into sharp relief the lonely, confined lives many immigrants in the United States were already living.
One of the first times I met with Antonio, a middle-aged undocumented man in Queens, he was an hour late.
When he arrived, panting, he explained that while he was on the subway, word spread among passengers that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were waiting at the next station. Antonio stayed on the train for several more stops—but when he got off, he said he saw agents at that station too. This was the only day that entire month, he told me, that he had risked taking the subway.
Antonio, who asked to be identified by his first name only to protect his privacy, managed to evade the officers. But experiences such as this, he told me, are why he had restricted his movements as much as possible. Other than going to and from his job—Antonio worked at a New York City construction company—our interview, he said, was the first time he’d left his apartment in recent memory.
This was in August 2019. Last month, on April 18, Antonio died of COVID-19.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic forced much of the world’s population into lockdown, many undocumented immigrants in the United States were used to confining themselves in the way that Antonio did, living in fear not of infection, but of discovery. According to academics, clinicians, and migrants themselves, isolation is a fundamental part of undocumented life in America.
“I crossed through the desert and across a river without food or drink. And when I arrived here, the reality was much worse than I had believed it would be,” Antonio told me. “You can’t go to the park, can’t go to church to distract yourself, because ICE could arrive at any moment. Life becomes a battle against anxiety.”
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