It was late on Nov. 5 when Estrella and her husband, Chivo, realized their lives were about to change.
The couple had called Oregon home for decades, but as they sat in their living room that night, eyes glued to the election results appearing on TV, they inched closer to a life-altering decision.
“Why, why, why?” Estrella asked in Spanish as Donald Trump won his bid to return to the White House.
Chivo, 63, and Estrella, 60, are undocumented immigrants, and Chivo has a criminal record. They consider Trump’s return to power, and the unsettling fear of being deported and losing all of their possessions, too big of a risk. So the couple have made the decision to leave Oregon, representing the small segment of undocumented immigrants who are heeding Trump’s warnings and effectively deporting themselves to Mexico.
“He doesn’t want us to be here anymore,” Chivo said in Spanish, asking the newsroom to identify the couple by only the nicknames that some people call them to avoid becoming an immigration target before departing this fall.
“And before he locks us up, it’s better for us to find a path that’s best for us.”
An estimated 120,000 undocumented immigrants live in Oregon and, advocates say, similar considerations are being made in households across the state, if not the nation. Trump has promised the largest deportation effort in American history and monthly arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have spiked to their highest levels in more than a decade.
While deportations don’t yet appear to be surging, the Trump administration’s headline-grabbing controversies have been politically effective, stirring anxiety. Among other things, officials have forcibly removed immigrants and sent them to a notorious El Salvador prison under the 1798 wartime Alien Enemies Act, which was last invoked by a president after the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. The administration is separately offering $1,000 payments to people who agree to voluntarily leave the country, although some attorneys have warned immigrants to be wary of the program.
Estrella and Chivo had been debating whether to return to their hometown, near Guadalajara, to help care for Chivo’s elderly and ailing father. But they didn’t settle on a decision until after they saw Trump was sticking to his aggressive immigration enforcement plans, which include targeting undocumented immigrants with criminal histories.
Chivo fits that description. He was convicted three times for driving under the influence in the 1990s and 2000s, including once in 2007 when his blood alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit, according to court records. He was ordered deported in 2009 and he and Estrella left voluntarily, she said, but they returned in 2010. Chivo has no criminal history in Oregon in the years since.
In all, Chivo has lived in the United States for more than 40 years. He’s planted pine trees, worked in a warehouse and at nurseries, and now does landscaping and construction. Estrella joined him more than 30 years ago and started in the fields before quickly finding steady work cleaning hotel rooms. Both pay income and Social Security taxes. They raised three of their four kids in Oregon, and are now actively helping with their nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Until a few years ago, the couple envisioned staying rooted in the Willamette Valley with their growing family. Oregon’s sanctuary law, approved in 1987, prohibits local officials from cooperating with immigration enforcement without a judicial warrant. The couple had been on edge during Trump’s first term but thought the worst was over when Joe Biden defeated him in 2020.
“And if Kamala Harris had won, we would be more calm,” Estrella said. “ … But no, this chamuco (devil or troublemaker) entered. He is a chamuco, you can’t call him any other way.”
Only 30,000 undocumented immigrants, or a quarter of Oregon’s undocumented population, have lived in the state for at least 20 years, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute. Just 8,000 undocumented immigrants are 55 and older, like Estrella and Chivo.
During a weekend in February, when the couple’s only son came to visit, Chivo confided that a decision had been made.
“They don’t want us to leave,” Estrella said. “But what are we going to do? If they kick us out with nothing, it’s better to take our little belongings.”
Arriving in America
The couple grew up on the same block, just a few houses away, in a village about 10 minutes from Cocula, Jalisco, called Santa Teresa Municipio de Cocula. They knew each other since childhood and even dated. But they never imagined they would end up marrying.
Chivo left Mexico for the United States in 1979 in search of a job and a better life to escape poverty. A coyote, or smuggler, helped him cross the U.S-Mexico border through Tijuana, Mexico, he said. It wasn’t as difficult to cross back then.
Chivo remembers it being cold the night he and two of his uncles walked through the desert hills at midnight so they would be harder for border patrol to detect.
“We were coming north to make money,” he said. “I have always enjoyed working.”
Chivo settled in California. He started at a nursery, preparing plants for shipping, then found work picking daisies. In 1983 he moved to Oregon, where he planted and cut pine trees for Christmas harvests.
Chivo would occasionally return to Mexico to visit family, and it was during one of those trips that he reconnected with Estrella, who had moved to nearby Guadalajara.
They both went to their village in the fall of 1984 for their hometown’s annual Fiesta de Santa Teresa. They saw each other at the celebration and the next day Chivo asked Estrella’s family for her hand.
“Even I can’t believe it,” Estrella said on a recent afternoon, a smattering of boxes scattered across their apartment. “That was a spontaneous (moment) we had.”
The couple married and Estrella became pregnant with their first child. Chivo returned to Oregon for work but made it back to Mexico in 1985 to see the birth of his daughter.
The pattern continued, with another daughter born in 1986, a son in 1987 and a daughter in 1991. Three years later, Chivo and Estrella decided she should move to Oregon and, if successful, the kids would eventually follow. Moving everyone at once would be too expensive.
Estrella left her children with in-laws and used a coyote to cross the U.S-Mexico border at Nogales, Arizona. She remembers having to jump over a laminated fence before meeting a man who was waiting in America to help her and others in the group. Eventually she joined Chivo in Oregon.
“I was happy to see him,” she said. “But at the same time, I was sad because I had left my children. Every time I would talk to them, I would cry.”
Reuniting with family
It took six years for the family to begin reuniting in Oregon.
Crossing the border with coyotes, three of their four children arrived between 2000 and 2002, with the youngest choosing to remain in Mexico. The oldest kids moved to the Willamette Valley as teenagers with no English skills, navigating a different world. Only one of them, the second-oldest daughter, went to school while the other teens went straight to work at a food processing plant to make money, Estrella said.
“They were happy,” she said. “They didn’t care whether they had papers or didn’t have papers.”
The family liked Oregon’s temperate weather and lush landscape. They celebrated birthdays with special meals cooked inside their apartment. Eventually, each child moved out and started their own lives. Two obtained green cards granting U.S. residency, and the third is seeking one, their parents said.
Life wasn’t always easy. Chivo said he got the DUIIs because he used to like drinking but has changed his ways. Estrella said the last time Chivo drank was about six months ago, and only a small amount while at home.
“He would say, ‘Only I know why I drink. Too many problems,’” she said of the time when he was drinking heavily. Chivo’s kids kept their distance from him back then, she added, but now he’s the one doling out advice about the importance of driving only when sober.
“There’s a saying that says, ‘The blows in life are what make you learn,’” she said.
These days, the family still gets together almost every weekend to enjoy Estrella’s cooking. Tamales, birria, pozole, tostadas, taquitos, sopes.
“She knows how to cook very well,” Chivo said, “that’s why we don’t go to restaurants.”
The aromas of authentic Mexican food waft through the apartment as children run around and adults go for seconds. The apartment gets loud.
“There are times when I tell them, ‘Shhh,’” Chivo joked.
“But everybody is happy,” Estrella added. “They are here, they are eating.”
The couple’s oldest daughter said she treasures the family get-togethers, just as she did as a teen.
She doesn’t want to see her parents return to Mexico but said it’s their decision to make. The grandchildren, and especially her 14-year-old son, are attached to them, grandma in particular.
“We will miss them a lot,” she said in Spanish.
Packing for Mexico
Chivo and Estrella are preparing for their move box by box.
They don’t have much: everything they own fits in their two-bedroom apartment, which they share with Estrella’s brother. But those items have meaning and, in some cases, can’t be easily replaced in Mexico.
“I’ve tried to save and save,” Chivo said. “We are not rich but we are also not empty handed to say, well, we can’t cover the cost of an illness.”
They plan to ship nearly all their possessions to their family’s small, three-bedroom home in Mexico, where their youngest daughter lives with Chivo’s 91-year-old father. Estrella is making plans to pack her best kitchen dishes, pots, pans and large mixer. The couple will also box up their clothing and a microwave, TVs and stacked washer and dryer. Electronic items typically cost more in Mexico, they said, and the brands aren’t as good.
Coco and Lima, two parakeets that Estrella got as a birthday gift from her son and daughter-in-law three years ago, chirp in the background on a late afternoon in their apartment. “Maybe they will go to Mexico as well,” Estrella joked.
At their age, the couple doesn’t believe they’ll land jobs in Mexico. Chivo expects to tend to his cows and Estrella plans to bake and sell bread from their house to help make ends meet.
Chivo and Estrella say they worry about being arrested and detained in an immigration raid before they leave. But work is where they seek refuge from their worries, and to raise more money before returning to Mexico.
“I go to work and I feel comfortable,” Chivo said. “I get rid of all the thoughts, you see?”
The couple plans to leave Oregon in early October to make it back in time for their hometown’s annual celebration, where they reconnected more than 40 years ago. Until then, they hope to spend as much time as possible with their family.
No grand send-off is planned.
“I think I would feel sadder,” Chivo said. “I don’t like saying goodbye.”
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