NBC YLIJ: The Working Immigrant

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Piedad Cabrera is a 41-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant in the United States who has been trying to obtain her legal documents for over five years, and finds herself increasingly circumvented by new policies of the Trump administration.

Nineteen years ago, Cabrera left behind Ecuador, her home country, undertaking an arduous journey to come to the U.S., seeking the opportunities everyone spoke of. She, like thousands of others, had heard stories of how bright life in the U.S. could be, and hers was only one of the millions of hands reaching for the “American Dream.” In order to do this, she had to leave behind not just the farm she grew up on, but her family.

Like many other immigrants, Cabrera had to cross the border at Mexico. After she made it across, the wife of the “coyote” (trafficker) who had helped her cross made her clean her home as a way of “paying off her debt”.

“It was hard. It was a point in time where I was essentially a slave for this woman, there was no pay and I had to sleep on the bathroom floor. My eldest brother had made it to the city, but I was stuck. I couldn’t say anything, or the coyote would send me back,” Cabrera said. For two years, she lived a life akin to slavery, just to make it to the U.S.

Getting into the U.S. was freeing, for sometime. Cabrera soon started working in a factory, operating heavy machinery to make ends meet. Her day started at four in the morning and didn’t end until ten at night. She worked the hours to prove to her brother that he hadn’t made the wrong decision in paying the $12,000 it took to bring her across, which she ultimately had to pay back.