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A Way To Document The Undocumented Proposed In Phoenix

A Way To Document The Undocumented Proposed In Phoenix
Roque Planas
By 

National Reporter, HuffPost

NOGALES, MEXICO - MARCH 10: Javier Guerrero from Mexico attends a Catholic Mass with his visiting son, Javier Jr. (3), a U.S. citizen, at the Kino Border Initiative center for immigrants near the U.S.-Mexico border on March 10, 2013 in Nogales, Mexico. He is married to American citizen Lace Rodriguez, and the family had lived together in Phoenix. Guerrero, an undocumented worker from Mexico, said he was detained by the U.S. Border Patrol after being stopped for speeding and drug possession, held for three months by ICE and then deported March 4 to Nogales, Mexico. Guerrero had lived in the United States for 17 years. He and Rodriguez, a medical student, have two children, and she is nine-months pregnant with a third. The splitting up of families has become a major issue as the U.S. works towards immigration reform. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
NOGALES, MEXICO - MARCH 10: Javier Guerrero from Mexico attends a Catholic Mass with his visiting son, Javier Jr. (3), a U.S. citizen, at the Kino Border Initiative center for immigrants near the U.S.-Mexico border on March 10, 2013 in Nogales, Mexico. He is married to American citizen Lace Rodriguez, and the family had lived together in Phoenix. Guerrero, an undocumented worker from Mexico, said he was detained by the U.S. Border Patrol after being stopped for speeding and drug possession, held for three months by ICE and then deported March 4 to Nogales, Mexico. Guerrero had lived in the United States for 17 years. He and Rodriguez, a medical student, have two children, and she is nine-months pregnant with a third. The splitting up of families has become a major issue as the U.S. works towards immigration reform. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- It was tough to convince Viridiana Hernández to call the Phoenix police when her house was broken into. She now has a work permit, under Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) plan, which temporarily protects her from deportation.

But when someone broke into her house in 2012, her only form of identification was a matrícula consular (a Mexican consular ID card), and she was afraid it might raise suspicions that she was an undocumented immigrant.

Hernández eventually decided to call the police anyway, though she knows of many cases of Phoenix residents who are afraid to call the police when they are victims or witnesses of a crime.

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