I cracked open the front door just enough to peek outside. On my stoop I saw four large men dressed head to toe in black, guns strapped at their waists. They asked my name and said they were looking for someone who lived at my address. I gave them a fake name, and that was perhaps my first mistake.

I assumed the men were local law enforcement canvassing the neighborhood for information on a midnight crime—you know, watchful officers stopping by to warn me. The day before, I’d dropped off my fiancée, Cassandra, and our 20-month-old daughter, Sophia, at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. They were heading to Saltillo, Mexico to visit my mother, a trip Cassandra insisted on making every six months or so to acquaint our daughter with my family, with whom I had more or less fallen out of touch. And so I was home alone, save for my dogs, and it was as if the men outside my door knew that. As their questions kept coming, my naivete faded. It became clear they were looking for me. My face grew numb. My legs shook. My balls shrank.

I told them I needed to put on some clothes before coming outside. I couldn’t think what the police would want with me. Yeah, I was on probation after being booked a few years earlier for drunk driving and holding a third of a gram of coke, but I hadn’t broken probation. There were no outstanding warrants for my arrest. I was following the rules, on good behavior.

I ran upstairs and called my stepfather. “Everything will be okay,” he told me. Despite his calmness, I felt terrified. Tears formed and my hands trembled. “Just do what they say,” he said.
I was 26 and had already been arrested three times, once for drunk driving and twice for drugs, so I knew the drill. They’d probably take me to some overly air-conditioned cell in the county jail for questioning, so I dressed warmly. I also grabbed $840 in cash for bail and phone calls. If they ended up cuffing me, I wanted to be prepared.

When I stepped outside I finally got a clear view of the men. Each wore a patch of the Texas flag on his uniform and had POLICE stitched across his chest, but none had a visible badge or ID. One handed me a document with the words *Operation Fugitive* printed along the top. It had all my information: my name, address, place of employment. I knew then the game was over. I told them I was in fact Javier Valadez. “We’re federal immigration agents,” one of the men said. “We’re arresting you for being in the country illegally.”

I froze. The idea that these men were Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers never crossed my mind. I had lived in the United States since I was 12. I grew up around Dallas and graduated from high school there. I had attended the University of Texas and received my associate’s degree from a community college. I’d created a successful arts and culture publication that had just been voted best magazine by the *Dallas Observer*. I paid my taxes. I spoke English.

As the men escorted me to a waiting SUV, I explained that I was on probation but was upholding the law. I told them I wasn’t a criminal.
“You might have paid for your crimes to the state of Texas,” one snarked, “but you still have to pay for your federal crimes to the United States.” The streets were eerily silent. My neighbors were still asleep. I took another look at my house. It would be the last time I saw it.

My family moved to the United States from Monclova, Mexico in July 2001, after I’d graduated from elementary school. I was 12. I don’t remember much prior to moving to Dallas, except that we were making the move because my father could make better money working construction in Texas. On the nine-hour drive north, I sat in the back of our Ford Escort next to a box of my childhood belongings, knowing nothing about our new home. I remember feeling numb. “Don’t look back, kids,” my dad said to my sister and me. I never did.

My parents came into the States on a six-month tourist visa. This was before 9/11, when immigration laws were relatively loose. It was easy to get into the States then, and that’s probably why my parents had no intention of adjusting our status after we settled. I could chalk it up to the fact that no one warned them of the consequences, but really, it was simple ignorance. They wanted my sister and me to assimilate quickly, so a month after our arrival my mother enrolled us in Reed Middle School in the Dallas suburb of Duncanville. I knew enough English to get by, but the school put me in an English as a second language class. I hated it. The other Spanish speakers in ESL were older and most were troublemakers who spent more time goofing around than studying. They relied on the teachers to do their homework and took advantage of the language barrier. I wanted out, so I worked hard and studied obsessively. After a year, the school transferred me into the regular curriculum, where I finally got to sit side by side with the American kids. That’s when I began to embrace my life in America.

The Mexican kids at my school were heavily influenced by American culture, and I became friends with them because of that. Together we made it a point to speak only English. We didn’t want to be judged by the “cool” American kids or be excluded by them. We took up skateboarding, which was the first time I understood the American dream. My skateboard gave me a high I’d never felt before; it gave me real freedom. A group of us often ventured into downtown Dallas and skated into the night while listening to 1990s punk, rock and hip-hop. We’d ask strangers to buy us 40s from the 7-Eleven, and if the cops came, we’d scatter. It was thrilling. I felt like I was living in Harmony Korine’s *Kids*. It was the first time I truly felt like an American teenager.

After I became fluent in English, it was almost as if I weren’t Mexican anymore. Most people assumed I was Jewish, French, Arabic or Caucasian. I made good marks in art classes, dated a blue-eyed blonde on the cheer squad and became president of the drafting club. No one questioned my ethnicity, let alone my immigration status. I forgot about it and stopped feeling like a foreigner. I belonged to the country I lived in. I was American.

I wasn’t well informed about the naturalization process because it was easy not to be. My mother gave birth to my younger sister at a Texas hospital, endowing her with birthright citizenship. My parents were able to buy a home and cars and have credit cards, all without having legitimate Social Security numbers. Capitalism doesn’t care where you’re from or to whom you’re related. If everyone in the system works in his or her own self-interest, the law turns a blind eye.

That became all the more true in 2001 when Governor Rick Perry signed into law a provision allowing undocumented immigrant students to receive in-state tuition if they promised to apply for permanent status later. The only catch was you had to be a Texas resident for at least three years and have a Texas high school diploma. I qualified and attended the University of Texas, Arlington, where I studied petroleum engineering. I got a driver’s license, a job and my own apartment, all without proper documentation. For years I thrived and enjoyed the promise of America, but in 2012, the law caught up with me—though it had nothing to do with my citizenship status.

My parents divorced in 2011. For the first time since moving to Texas, my dad couldn’t find a steady job without documentation. This was at the height of the Great Recession, when the unemployment rate was 10 percent, so getting a job without a legitimate SSN or work permit was impossible. My father had gone from a well-paying construction job to a maintenance job at an apartment complex to being jobless. On top of that, my parents’ mortgage was one of the thousands of predatory loans handed out by lenders during the housing bubble. Their interest rate skyrocketed and they struggled to pay their bills, further straining the family. It came to a head when my father packed up and headed back to Mexico, leaving me with my mom and soon-to-be stepfather, who purchased our home directly from my dad. “Don’t look back,” he’d once told me, and I don’t believe he did.

My dad and I had become best friends when things got rough. I made an effort to see him. Mexican men commonly avoid obvious affection; we were an exception. When he left for Mexico, his absence hit me hard. I broke off all communication with him and turned to pot and booze. I was depressed and wrapped myself in a sheath of hazy pleasure to distract from the pain. I tried to focus in school, but my smoking and drinking turned habitual. By May 2011, my abuse had gotten so bad I had no choice but to drop out of college, vacate my apartment and move back home.

I pretended I was fine, and that was enough to appease my mom. At one point she found marijuana in my room but ignored it. She should have confronted me. I should have asked for help. Instead I did nothing. In April 2012 I was arrested at Cedar Hill State Park on my way to meet friends at a campsite. The cops busted me carrying a fair amount of weed and a small amount of cocaine. I don’t use coke—I was holding it for a friend—but, as they say, the dog never really eats the homework. By September of the same year, I was arrested twice more for marijuana possession and once for drunk driving. It was the end of the line. I had spiraled deeper and deeper into self-sabotage, maniacally snuffing out the light of my own dream.

For the first time since I’d crossed the border at 12 years old, the law noticed me.

I was convicted of DWI and misdemeanor drug possession and put on two years’ probation. The state sentenced me to random testing and substance-abuse counseling and installed a Breathalyzer in my car. My family, having spent thousands of dollars on my court fees, didn’t think much of me. The all-American do-good narrative I aspired to had crumbled into dust.

The first time I was released from the county jail for marijuana possession, I didn’t call my family. I’d spent four days locked up, and the chilling solitude had forced me to stew in embarrassment and humiliation. I wasn’t ready to face them. Instead I turned off my cell phone, lit a cigarette and wandered downtown Dallas. I was aimless. Alone, I started to see the streets in a different way. This city was my home, but I had lost sight of how much it had given me. I reflected on my mistakes, desperate to atone. I knew I had talent, and I knew a lot of talented people—artists, writers and other creative folk. Dallas had so much bubbling artistic value and offered more than football, cheerleaders and honky-tonks. It could go head-to-head with San Antonio and Austin as the state’s beating cultural heart. I knew this. Smart 20-somethings who’d grown up in Dallas knew this. And then, just like that, everything made sense.

I was working at a printing company and knew the ins and outs of publishing. I had access to photographers, designers, artists and writers. All I needed to do was assemble the right people in the right room and make them believe in this incredible idea I had: I wanted to create a new kind of culture magazine for Dallas dwellers, by Dallas dwellers. I wanted to give back to my city, but more than that, I wanted to jolt it with a radical current of new energy.

I knew I could afford to print the magazine in-house at my company, but my mind has always been more artistic than editorial. So I tapped my friend Lee Escobedo, who studied journalism, and he tapped his friends, and soon enough we had a devoted team of doers with a hell-yeah attitude. We decided to name our magazine *[THRWD](http://www.thrwd.com/)*, defined by us in the first issue as “another word for: cool, dope, cray cray, or fuck’d up.” The first issue launched in late 2012 with a masthead that included an art director, an editor in chief, 12 contributors and me on board as creative director. “Dallas is our home. Staying local is our first priority,” we wrote in the inaugural issue’s manifesto. “Are you *THRWD* on life? I’m talking fucked-up on creativity, faded on expression? Good. That means you’re alive. The simple act of reading this puts you on the first step to getting *THRWD*. Read it on the train, while taking a shit or after a long fuck."

We profiled local printmakers and bands on the rise. We covered everything from interracial dating and race relations to new restaurants and budding bars. We interviewed ethnically diverse painters, printed original poetry and quoted Susan Sontag and Tony Kushner. The magazine was a success. The local NPR affiliate described *THRWD* as a hub for “collaboration, cross-pollination and DIY culture.” We became recognized enough in Dallas that we celebrated our one-year anniversary by throwing a concert, THRWD Fest, which drew our “usual hip and knowledgeable crowd,” as described by *D Magazine*. In July 2014 I was named Dallas’s “avant-gardist publisher” and one of the city’s 100 leading creative entrepreneurs. Soon after, the *Dallas Observer* voted *THRWD* “best zine in the city.”

It was one of my proudest moments, foremost because it meant I’d escaped my darkness. I’d created something tangible, respected and beneficial to the city I loved. I felt I was paying my debt. Riding on those good vibes, I fell in love and became a father. I looked forward to marrying Cassandra and finally receiving citizenship. Life made sense again.

Six months later, ICE pounded on my front door.

---

When I arrived at ICE’s field office in Dallas, the officers let me make three phone calls. I called my stepfather, my lawyer Robert Simmons and my employer. I couldn’t call my fiancée because she was in Mexico, but my stepfather said he would contact her. Again he assured me, “Everything will be okay.” My lawyer said it was strange they’d booked me when I had a clean probation record. “I have it under control,” he said. When I told my boss I couldn’t come to work that day, she made a joke. “I could have guessed by the caller ID,” she said. Everyone sounded calm, cheery even.
I waited for seven hours with the other men ICE had poached in the middle of the night before armed guards transported us via a 90-minute bus ride to the Johnson County Detention Center in Cleburne, Texas. There, we were taken to an isolated compound of four brick buildings. Like all government facilities, these hummed with fluorescent lighting and were cooled to bone-chilling temperatures. We were fed ham sandwiches and shown two videos. One warned us about sexual abuse among inmates. The other was a primer on navigating immigration court. When that video played, I saw hope in the eyes around me, but I felt nothing. In my mind, I didn’t belong there in the first place.

The other detainees were different from me. One kid was “celebrating” his 21st birthday. He told me how he’d gotten lost walking through the desert on his way to the States and had to drink his own piss to survive. A man from Honduras told me he’d seen an Indian man die in the desert on his journey. The Indian hadn’t known how hard the walk would be and collapsed from exhaustion. His heart gave out soon after. Others had similar stories. Some worried their pregnant wives would be raped; others pretended to be married to strangers. The stories were shocking, but the tone of the men telling them said otherwise, as if it had all been normal, or at least expected when you enter the U.S. that way.

I met Nigerians, an Egyptian and someone from the Congo. They were all nice enough, but I didn’t meet anyone like me. I didn’t meet anyone who’d grown up in the States, attended a public university and started his own magazine. I met only desperate men, some of whom had been locked up for months and whose sacrifices seemed far greater than mine. After talking to enough of them, I discovered that most of us were on probation—and I realized that’s why I was among them.