Speaker 1: O La Latino USA listener, Gomo Tuta, So today we're
Speaker 1: gonna shure an episode from Imperfect Paradise A Return to Mexico,
Speaker 1: a show by our colleagues over at LAist. The show
Speaker 1: tells the story of Danielle Samora, who remade his life
Speaker 1: after being deported from the US to Mexico. Throughout the series,
Speaker 1: we'll learn about Danielle's journey from the time he spent
Speaker 1: as a teenager without his parents in Rio Blanco and
Speaker 1: then coming of age in Los Angeles and Iowa, and
Speaker 1: finally focusing in on his current life Insula Juarez as
Speaker 1: a retornado or returnee. Hosted by reporter Lorenardos, the show
Speaker 1: dissects the narratives around deportation as failure and the alternate
Speaker 1: lives that immigrants leave behind and construct anew Here's episode
Speaker 1: one of Imperfect Paradise Return to Mexico and dear listener,
Speaker 1: there is talk of suicide ideation in this episode, so
Speaker 1: please take care.
Speaker 2: Back in twenty twenty one, reporter Lorena Rios traveled to
Speaker 2: Suda Juarez to meet up with a man named Danielle
Speaker 2: Samora in a small cafe.
Speaker 3: And the place is tiny a super cozy, a little
Speaker 3: bit dark, so Danielle and I sat by the window
Speaker 3: so that we could get a little bit of light.
Speaker 3: I wanted to meet Danielle because he's a returnado or returnee.
Speaker 2: A returney can be someone who either by force or
Speaker 2: by choice, goes back to their country of origin after
Speaker 2: being a migrant somewhere else. This is a global concept,
Speaker 2: but in this case, Lorena was interested in how return
Speaker 2: migration happens for Mexican migrants between the US and Mexico.
Speaker 3: I was interested in the return ye community from a
Speaker 3: journalistic standpoint, But once I met Danielle and I started
Speaker 3: asking questions, I realized that the questions that I had
Speaker 3: for him were questions that I had about my own
Speaker 3: experience of return.
Speaker 2: In d Nielle's story, Lorena heard echoes of her own.
Speaker 2: Lorena grew up in Monterrey, Mexico, until she was seventeen.
Speaker 2: For economic reasons, her family had to move to Texas
Speaker 2: in two thousand and seven. She would go to college
Speaker 2: in the States and then grad school where she pursued journalism,
Speaker 2: but eventually, at the age of twenty eight, for a
Speaker 2: complicated mix of reasons, she would find herself back in
Speaker 2: Mexico for me.
Speaker 3: Ever, since I came back to Mexico five years ago,
Speaker 3: I felt disconnected from my home country, from my hometown,
Speaker 3: and unsure about where I want to be and my
Speaker 3: relationship to Mexico.
Speaker 2: So in that cafe in Juarez back in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: Lorena was wrapped by d Nill's story. In a lot
Speaker 2: of narratives about immigration, there is an underlying message that
Speaker 2: migrants come to the US because life is better here,
Speaker 2: that it's more economically comfortable, more fulfilling, more free. But
Speaker 2: Danian's story questions that assumption.
Speaker 3: Can you describe your relationship to Sua Quarees?
Speaker 4: Once I accepted my reality, I came to understand that
Speaker 4: beauty was wrong around me.
Speaker 2: Danian's story spans from the cornfields of Iowa to the
Speaker 2: call centers of Guadis to the Eiffel Tower, Paris, France.
Speaker 2: It's about what it's like to leave everything you know
Speaker 2: and come back to a place that doesn't feel like home,
Speaker 2: and it all starts with a love story. This is
Speaker 2: episode one of Imperfect Paradise Returned to Mexico. Lorenarios takes
Speaker 2: it from here.
Speaker 3: It was two thousand and eight and Daniel Samora had
Speaker 3: just graduated with an art degree from Grennell College in Iowa.
Speaker 3: The look was buzz cut, graphic tees and Chuck Taylor's.
Speaker 3: His plan was to move home to la and get
Speaker 3: a job, but his car had other ideas.
Speaker 4: My jip had some transmission problem. I was able to
Speaker 4: go forward, but not back. I knew that I would
Speaker 4: have to stay a couple of more days.
Speaker 3: So Danielle took his car to the shop, and while
Speaker 3: waiting for it to be fixed, he went out.
Speaker 4: A friend invited me over to go to a bar
Speaker 4: in De Moin. We went to a gate bar called
Speaker 4: the Blazing Saturn. I was outside of the bar smoking
Speaker 4: and I met A Rick Miller.
Speaker 5: It was nighttime. I think we're in the parking lot area,
Speaker 5: and I guess is romantic as that sounds, and I
Speaker 5: thought he was the most handsome guy, an outgoing type
Speaker 5: of a people person.
Speaker 4: Eric is these very handsome men from Michigan. He had
Speaker 4: this more like nerdy look, the little button down shirt,
Speaker 4: as white as he can get, blue eyes, gorgeous smile,
Speaker 4: trovit blonde.
Speaker 5: So I just had the courage and just want to
Speaker 5: start talking to him.
Speaker 3: Daniel's version is slightly different.
Speaker 4: A friend of Eric came over to me and he
Speaker 4: told me, hey, my friend thinks you're cute. And I
Speaker 4: looked over to him and I'm like, well, tell him
Speaker 4: to tell me so right. I've always thought that if
Speaker 4: you want to say something, say it to someone right.
Speaker 4: Doesn't send someone else to do your dirty work.
Speaker 5: I mean, very well. Could have happened. Like I said,
Speaker 5: it was a long time ago.
Speaker 4: We went back inside, we danced a little bit and
Speaker 4: we kissed. Perhaps it was they dancing and you know,
Speaker 4: all this smoke. I don't know, but every single piece
Speaker 4: fell in the right place.
Speaker 6: And that was it.
Speaker 3: Daniel's car got fixed, but he'd be staying in Iowa
Speaker 3: with Eric. Un Less than two months after meeting that night,
Speaker 3: they moved in together. In the next two years, Danielle
Speaker 3: and Eric built their lives as a couple. They got
Speaker 3: a calico kitten and named her Bibi, decided to move
Speaker 3: to Austin, Texas, found jobs, made friends, and settled into
Speaker 3: the daily rhythms of life. Daniel liked imagining his American
Speaker 3: life with Eric, stretching into the future.
Speaker 4: He would come home and there would be apple pie baked,
Speaker 4: and that would be with him until we growled. He
Speaker 4: made me feel safe, and I knew that as long
Speaker 4: as I was with him, I would be okay. I
Speaker 4: almost forgot where I had come from. I was living
Speaker 4: in a bubble, and the bubble felt really nice.
Speaker 3: One summer weekend in twenty eleven, Daniel and Eric decided
Speaker 3: to go on a getaway to visit friends on South
Speaker 3: Padre Island, a resort town in Texas.
Speaker 5: It was a gravel road, It was kind of dusty,
Speaker 5: it was hot, very humid. I think they were just
Speaker 5: kind of like large open spaces, like maybe ranches. Everything
Speaker 5: was kind of like light green.
Speaker 4: I was laying down, the music was playing. He was
Speaker 4: I mean, I didn't have a care in the world.
Speaker 4: I was just waiting for us to get to the beach.
Speaker 4: I woke up because the road was feeling kind of bumpy.
Speaker 4: So I remember waking up, opening my eyes and the
Speaker 4: first thing that I saw was that we were kind
Speaker 4: of in the middle of the bushes. We were on
Speaker 4: a dirt road, and I asked Derek, what are we doing?
Speaker 4: Where are we going? I said, Oh, I just want
Speaker 4: to see the wall.
Speaker 3: The wall, the artificial boundary that separates the us from Mexico.
Speaker 6: For Eric, it was a curiosity.
Speaker 5: I was kind of interested, you know, the border and
Speaker 5: the river and seeing what it was like, and I
Speaker 5: was like, Oh, let's go on this road. I remember
Speaker 5: seeing the wall, big iron slats, and I think they
Speaker 5: were constructed on such a that you couldn't squeeze through them.
Speaker 5: He could feel a little bit through them, but the.
Speaker 3: Wall meant something very different to Danielle.
Speaker 4: I felt like the time stood still for a second.
Speaker 4: I felt afraid.
Speaker 3: Daniel had crossed into the US at sixteen without papers.
Speaker 3: His parents had worked with a lawyer to get documentation
Speaker 3: for the family. Danielle says, as far as he knew,
Speaker 3: the process was still moving along.
Speaker 6: He and Eric didn't talk.
Speaker 3: About it, so Eric had no idea that Danielle was undocumented.
Speaker 3: As they drove, they realized they weren't alone on the road.
Speaker 4: And suddenly all of these border patrol trucks start showing
Speaker 4: up parks in front of us, and two more pull
Speaker 4: up behind us. I kept on telling myself that everything
Speaker 4: was going to be fine. Eric told me that everything
Speaker 4: was going to be fine. It was a routine check.
Speaker 3: The officers asked Danielle and Eric what they were doing there,
Speaker 3: asked them to show their ideas. Danielle says he wasn't
Speaker 3: given a reason for why they'd been pulled over. Normally,
Speaker 3: the Fourth Amendment protects you from arbitrary searches and seizures,
Speaker 3: but because of national security justifications, within one hundred miles
Speaker 3: of the border, those rules don't apply. The officers focused
Speaker 3: their attention on Danielle.
Speaker 4: The police officers starting struggling a little bit with my identity.
Speaker 4: They started going back and forth to figure out who
Speaker 4: I was, and they kept on pressuring me, telling me
Speaker 4: that I had just crossed the border, and I kept
Speaker 4: on telling them no.
Speaker 3: Officers told Danielle that they couldn't find him in the
Speaker 3: system and that he had to go with them to
Speaker 3: the station.
Speaker 6: Eric was confused.
Speaker 5: I thought maybe there was some sort of a some
Speaker 5: sort of a mistake.
Speaker 4: I was told to face the car and put my
Speaker 4: hands behind my back. I was handcuffed, and as I
Speaker 4: was being led to the border patrol truck, I just
Speaker 4: looked back and I saw Eric, and I wanted to
Speaker 4: say something, and I couldn't. I just remember that my heart.
Speaker 3: Stopped in that arid stretch of South Texas. Danielle says
Speaker 3: he was handcuffed by border patrol and driven to an
Speaker 3: immigration processing office in McAllen. Danielle says he was asked
Speaker 3: to sit at a big, semi circular desk.
Speaker 6: The desk was a fake.
Speaker 3: Yellow wood color, and behind it, Danielle could see holding
Speaker 3: cells with people in them. Across the desk, various officers
Speaker 3: were typing away trying to find records of him in
Speaker 3: the database.
Speaker 4: They kept on going back and forth, back and forth,
Speaker 4: back and forth, until an officer to him, like, you
Speaker 4: know what, I can't find anything. This other officer came
Speaker 4: back and he said, like, let me have a go.
Speaker 3: Daniil remembers waiting for an hour, sitting on a cold
Speaker 3: concrete bench until eventually, he says, one of the officers
Speaker 3: looked up and told daniel that he'd found a room
Speaker 3: move order against them, meaning he could be deported. Daniel
Speaker 3: was confused. He knew he was undocumented, but he thought
Speaker 3: he was on track to being documented in some way.
Speaker 6: But at the border processing.
Speaker 3: Center, Daniel found out this was not true.
Speaker 6: According to a.
Speaker 3: Document we got from the Board of Immigration Appeals, his
Speaker 3: parents had lost their case back around two thousand and four.
Speaker 3: The family had been put under a deportation order, but
Speaker 3: they did not leave the US. Danielle says he didn't
Speaker 3: know about it, and his parents didn't talk.
Speaker 6: To us for this story. But this deportation order.
Speaker 3: That's what must have shown up in the database.
Speaker 6: At the station.
Speaker 3: Danielle was anxious, and as the gravity of the situation
Speaker 3: started to sink in, he was presented with two impossible options.
Speaker 4: When they told me that I would have to be
Speaker 4: removed from the country, and I told him, like, well,
Speaker 4: you know, can I call a lawyer? And they said
Speaker 4: very clearly, now, like you have two choices. You can
Speaker 4: either stay in jail until an immigration judge can see you,
Speaker 4: but that can take months and I'll make sure that
Speaker 4: it takes a long time. Or I could leave and
Speaker 4: I could apply for re entry.
Speaker 3: We tracked down a lawyer who would end up helping
Speaker 3: Danielle pro bono, and she explained it this way. Basically,
Speaker 3: Danielle was in a loose, loose situation. He could either
Speaker 3: be put in the attention and wait for a court
Speaker 3: date or be deported.
Speaker 4: I foolishly thought that I would be able to come
Speaker 4: back as soon as I said for the Medica kind
Speaker 4: of be able to reapply for ranger in the US
Speaker 4: or within a couple of years, you know, and I
Speaker 4: would be reunited with my family once again.
Speaker 3: At the office in South Texas, Danielle was alone, no lawyers,
Speaker 3: no parents, and no information about his rights or how
Speaker 3: the immigration legal system even worked, which researchers and lawyers
Speaker 3: say is not uncommon in these types of situations. Danielle
Speaker 3: was conflicted, and he was being pressured to make a
Speaker 3: decision quickly.
Speaker 4: I have this picture in my head of trying to
Speaker 4: put a house together made out of rocks, but there's
Speaker 4: no mortar or there's no glue holding the rocks together,
Speaker 4: and then suddenly you are putting the last rock up,
Speaker 4: and everything looks fine and it looks beautiful, but suddenly
Speaker 4: it just fonts and there's nothing you can do to
Speaker 4: stop it because there's no clue and nothing is holding
Speaker 4: it together.
Speaker 3: The first rock that made up Danielle's American life was
Speaker 3: Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: I honestly think that my life started when I moved
Speaker 4: to Ala.
Speaker 3: Danielle's parents had immigrated to the US from Mexico to
Speaker 3: find work. They didn't have papers, and when he had
Speaker 3: just turned sixteen, Danielle says he joined them, crossing by
Speaker 3: himself with a coyote. As soon as he got to
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, he threw himself into his new life and
Speaker 3: the American teenager experience.
Speaker 4: I took the Metro for the first time. My mom
Speaker 4: took me down to Los Co Johones in LA right
Speaker 4: the Allies in Fashion District, and we would go to
Speaker 4: the ninety nine cent store and I had my first
Speaker 4: McDonald's breakfast. LA felt like the most wonderful place on earth.
Speaker 4: That's what I think Disney England feels like. To people
Speaker 4: who visited, it felt welcoming.
Speaker 3: You said you knew like two three phrases in English.
Speaker 6: Do you remember what those were?
Speaker 4: I actually do. Hello. My name is Danielle. I live
Speaker 4: in Mexico. And I used to say, like, how much
Speaker 4: is it? That's as much as I knew.
Speaker 3: Danielle says he worked really hard to learn English so
Speaker 3: he could go back to school.
Speaker 4: I would come back home and I would literally sit
Speaker 4: down with the newspaper, the La Times, and my dictionary
Speaker 4: and a notebook, so I would literally have to translate
Speaker 4: every single word in that newspaper. And I would do
Speaker 4: that for one or two hours every day. As you
Speaker 4: will learn from other migrants. We learned English and we
Speaker 4: learn how to speak it very quickly, not because we
Speaker 4: want to, but because we need to.
Speaker 3: Daniel enrolled in high school as a freshman. He sent
Speaker 3: us some photos of himself from this time, oversized teas
Speaker 3: and jeans, white sketchers, races, and a livery copy of
Speaker 3: Harry Potter. Daniel says he got good grades and he
Speaker 3: also started making friends, and he would end up finding
Speaker 3: most of his friends in his favorite part of high school, theater.
Speaker 3: He started learning all about vocal exercise and doing plas
Speaker 3: after school. Daniel says that he wasn't really outgoing before,
Speaker 3: but being a part of the theater, being on the stage,
Speaker 3: it made him more comfortable to be true to himself
Speaker 3: and his sexuality. There's one moment in particular that felt
Speaker 3: pivotal when he got cast in the musical. A funny
Speaker 3: thing happened on the way to the forum. There's a
Speaker 3: scene where his character wears a dress, and Danielle remembers
Speaker 3: looking for his mom in the audience.
Speaker 4: I was wearing a dress and a wig, and I
Speaker 4: walk out on stage and I look at my mom's
Speaker 4: face and I was expecting to see shock. I was
Speaker 4: expecting to see disappointment or something. I all I saw
Speaker 4: was a smile on her face, and she started laughing
Speaker 4: hysterically when she saw me like that, and everybody started
Speaker 4: laughing hysterically. It felt wonderful. And when I started wearing
Speaker 4: a rainbow belt rainbow bracelet, it was fine. No one
Speaker 4: criticized me or ostracized me for being gay. I would
Speaker 4: have never thought, living in Mexico that I could be
Speaker 4: that frame.
Speaker 3: As high school came to an end, he had to
Speaker 3: think about what came after, about college, and for the
Speaker 3: first time, he says, his immigration status came up as
Speaker 3: a real obstacle.
Speaker 4: I knew the situation that I was in, and I
Speaker 4: knew what I couldn't have, and what I couldn't have
Speaker 4: was the American dream.
Speaker 6: But why why couldn't you have that?
Speaker 4: Because I needed to have more privileges that I wasn't
Speaker 4: able to access. My dream at that point was just
Speaker 4: to have an education, but I couldn't because I was
Speaker 4: strapped by my resources.
Speaker 3: Because he was undocumented, he couldn't get federal financial aid.
Speaker 3: He said his parents were not making enough money.
Speaker 6: To pay for college.
Speaker 3: His dad worked at a warehouse and his mom worked
Speaker 3: as a cleaner. But then Danielle's teachers nominated him for
Speaker 3: a competitive scholarship, which pays for low income kids to
Speaker 3: go to top private colleges across the country, and Danielle,
Speaker 3: with his good grades, charm and determination, got the scholarship.
Speaker 4: I felt like I could taste a little bit of
Speaker 4: like that American dream, that American life that some other
Speaker 4: classmates were seeing.
Speaker 3: And that's how Danielle ended up in Iowa.
Speaker 4: When I got to the college, I felt like I
Speaker 4: was illegally blonde. When she walked into Harvard and she
Speaker 4: sees these great holes.
Speaker 3: Danielle went to Grennell College, a school of about fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred students at the time, About a thousand of them
Speaker 3: were white, and only fifty five were Hispanic. Danielle says
Speaker 3: he used his theater skills to make friends with everyone,
Speaker 3: and he felt like the world opened up.
Speaker 4: It was my first time actually interacting all the time
Speaker 4: with people who had a life that was to a
Speaker 4: certain extent ful of privileges. Friends who vacations were in Aspen,
Speaker 4: or who were going to Paris Fashion Week.
Speaker 3: He decided to make the most of it. He studied
Speaker 3: art and took all sorts of classes like sculpture, dance, painting,
Speaker 3: print making, and photography.
Speaker 4: I wanted to explore beauty, to actually explore every single
Speaker 4: aspect of my life, of my body, of my perspective
Speaker 4: of the world, and put her on paper.
Speaker 3: It all culminated in a solo art exhibit at his graduation.
Speaker 3: Daniel's parents flew out and got to see the piece
Speaker 3: he made called twelve Moons, a wedding dress that was
Speaker 3: torn apart and coiled up to look like the moon.
Speaker 3: It was dedicated to his mom, who had never had
Speaker 3: a wedding, and it was accompanied by a poem.
Speaker 4: And it's talking about how my mom I see her
Speaker 4: as a moon, that even though she's not with me
Speaker 4: or she's not close to me, I always keep her
Speaker 4: in mind, in my heart, and whenever I need to,
Speaker 4: I can reach out and I can see her there.
Speaker 4: So it was very beautiful to have my parents there
Speaker 4: and I I am for are grateful and they were
Speaker 4: able to see in one stage and get that diploma.
Speaker 3: Danielle finished school in two thousand and eight, the year
Speaker 3: Obama became president. Danielle told us he canvassed for Barack Obama,
Speaker 3: who was campaigning on what is still known as La Promessa.
Speaker 3: Obama a promise to Latino voters that he delivered comprehensive
Speaker 3: immigration reform, including a legal path for millions of undocumented
Speaker 3: immigrants in the US. While we work to strengthen our borders,
Speaker 3: we need a practical solution for the problem of twelve
Speaker 3: million people who were here without documentation, many of whom
Speaker 3: have lived.
Speaker 1: In work here for years.
Speaker 5: That's why we need to offer those who are willing
Speaker 5: to make amends a pathway to citizenship.
Speaker 3: In a lot of ways, Danielle was graduating into a
Speaker 3: landscape of optimism for immigrants in America.
Speaker 1: I fought for you in the Senate, and I will
Speaker 1: make it a top priority in my.
Speaker 5: First year as President of the United States of America.
Speaker 3: But all of that would soon sour.
Speaker 4: Maybe my biggest disappointment was this Dream Act book.
Speaker 3: By the time that Danielle was driving along the Texas
Speaker 3: border with Eric in twenty eleven, there had been no
Speaker 3: comprehensive immigration reform. The Dream Act, which aimed to grant
Speaker 3: legal status to young people brought by their parents without
Speaker 3: papers to the US, failed to pass Congress. It was
Speaker 3: a bill meant to protect people like Danielle who had
Speaker 3: spent their formative years in the US and who felt
Speaker 3: America was their home. In twenty twelve, President Obama established
Speaker 3: the Third Action for Childhood or RIDE or DACA through
Speaker 3: executive action, but it would be too.
Speaker 6: Late for Danielle.
Speaker 3: La Promessa did not come to pass, but enforcement did
Speaker 3: ramp up as Obama faced criticism from border hawks, expansions
Speaker 3: of ICE, border Patrol and CVP, and record numbers of
Speaker 3: deportations every year of Obama's first term.
Speaker 1: We have more of everyone, ice, border patrol, surveillance, you
Speaker 1: name it.
Speaker 6: For us. This president has been the deporter in chief.
Speaker 4: The majority of the deportations seventy two percent were migrants
Speaker 4: from Mexico.
Speaker 1: Removals immigrants formally expelled and barred from returning, have risen
Speaker 1: to an all time high.
Speaker 3: Under the Obama administration. Nearly three million people were deported
Speaker 3: from the US, and Danielle was about to become one
Speaker 3: of them. At the Border Patrol station, daniel spent five
Speaker 3: hours trying to figure out what to do, whether he
Speaker 3: wanted to risk spending months in a detention center.
Speaker 4: I just felt like I wasn't going to be able
Speaker 4: to make it in jail, regardless of whatever happened. I mean,
Speaker 4: jail was going to be worse than coming back to Mexico.
Speaker 4: So I asked him if I could call Eric. They
Speaker 4: said yes. I called him and I let him know
Speaker 4: that I had decided that the best thing to do was.
Speaker 6: To be deported.
Speaker 3: Daniel decided to go through with the deportation process, but
Speaker 3: he couldn't totally escape detention.
Speaker 6: He says.
Speaker 3: Officers processed him into a cell.
Speaker 4: I was told to undress, I got the uniform, and
Speaker 4: then I was told to wait. When I was going
Speaker 4: to the prison facility where I was held, I noticed
Speaker 4: that all the men that I was in the cell
Speaker 4: with were either barefoot or they had shoes without laces
Speaker 4: on them. I was feeling shame because I felt like
Speaker 4: I had let my parents down, that all the time
Speaker 4: spent at school, all the money that they had put
Speaker 4: into my education, was all being wasted. I just sat
Speaker 4: down on a corner and I was really really cold,
Speaker 4: and I was hungry, and I didn't know what time
Speaker 4: it was.
Speaker 3: He thinks he was in there for about five days,
Speaker 3: but he has trouble remembering.
Speaker 6: It was all a blur, and like.
Speaker 4: I was sparalleling down and it got progressively worse. I
Speaker 4: started feeling like my life had no meaning. I felt
Speaker 4: like I had lost everything. When you were in this
Speaker 4: moment of despair, you think about the craziest things that
Speaker 4: you know that you could easily, you know, make it
Speaker 4: all end with the sheets that you have there, with
Speaker 4: the metal sinc.
Speaker 3: Finally, an officer handed him his clothes and told him
Speaker 3: it was time to go.
Speaker 4: We were driven at night to an airport and I
Speaker 4: saw this huge airplane and I saw how they started
Speaker 4: loading up the busses of pe pole they started loading
Speaker 4: up the plane. I had those chains that have handcuffs
Speaker 4: on your wrist and on your ankles, and it was
Speaker 4: really hard to walk up those metal stairs and to
Speaker 4: get on the plane. And they're cold, and the night
Speaker 4: fell cold, and I was angry.
Speaker 3: Danielle says he was flown from Texas to Yuma, Arizona,
Speaker 3: then rode a bus along the US Mexico border. He
Speaker 3: remembers looking out the window at the rusted metal wall
Speaker 3: and thinking how it could have been an installation by
Speaker 3: the artist Richard Serra. In a strange twist of faith.
Speaker 3: Danielle was briefly back in California, where his parents lived.
Speaker 3: The Boss took him across the Calexico Bridge to Mexicali, Mexico.
Speaker 3: He remembers seeing the Mexican flag waving in the air.
Speaker 4: I wanted to turn around because I felt like I
Speaker 4: didn't belong in Mexico. I was being brought back to
Speaker 4: a place that saw me be born, but no longer
Speaker 4: felt like home. And if home is where your heart is,
Speaker 4: my heart was in Texas and I was heartless.
Speaker 3: There's this particular moment Danielle remembers from the bus ride
Speaker 3: when the guards turned on the radio.
Speaker 4: The one song that stuck with me as I saw
Speaker 4: the Mexican border coming up was Sila Greens Fuck You.
Speaker 6: I don't know the song, how does the song look?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 4: The song said, as you've been writing around with the girl,
Speaker 4: I love that You've been doing your best, but now
Speaker 4: she's with someone else.
Speaker 3: Life.
Speaker 4: Forget you. That phrase, forget you, I felt it down
Speaker 4: in my heart as a goodbye song from me to America.
Speaker 2: Forget lorinar Rios is the lead reporter of Imperfect Paradise,
Speaker 2: Return to Mexico, coming up what it takes to get
Speaker 2: to the US physically and emotionally.
Speaker 4: And I was starting to feel the stroke coming and
Speaker 4: we start running, and I have no idea where.
Speaker 2: We were what it means to be ripped from your
Speaker 2: home and the people you love.
Speaker 4: When I finally saw him pull up on the street
Speaker 4: where I was living, I didn't know whether to kiss
Speaker 4: him or not.
Speaker 2: This story is about transition, and.
Speaker 4: I started having this weird struggle within the Mexican part
Speaker 4: that has this beautiful freedom that can go anywhere, or
Speaker 4: the American one that wants to come back. And it's
Speaker 4: always like longing for something that he no longer has.
Speaker 2: How Daniel found a sense of home in the middle
Speaker 2: of all that uncertainty and reclaimed his homeland. This episode
Speaker 2: of Imperfect Paradise Returned to Mexico was written and reported
Speaker 2: by Lorenard rios Co, writing by Natalie Schatovski, who is
Speaker 2: also the senior producer of the show. I'm the show's host,
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