Thousands of Students Cross the US-Mexico Border Every Day to Go to College
A young woman looks at shelves of books in a library
Many transborder students struggle with uncertainty over residency and
financial aid in an anti-immigrant climate.
Wave Break Media / Getty Images
By Charlotte West, The Hechinger ReportPublished June 24, 2019
San Ysidro, California The weight of her backpack is what comes to mind
when Andrea Morín thinks about crossing the U.S.-Mexico border between
Tijuana and San Diego every weekday to attend San Diego State University.
We have to struggle with the most basic things sometimes, the 22-year-old
theater major said. My backpack is super heavy cause I have to be here the
entire day. So I have to be carrying snacks, food, extra clothes.
Vannessa Falcón, a Ph.D. candidate in education in a joint program between
San Diego State and Claremont Graduate University, was 12 when she started
crossing the San Ysidro port of entry, one of the worlds busiest, to go to
middle school. For her, its become part of her identity and the subject
of her dissertation.
The reasons why I live a transborder life, said Falcón, are deeply rooted
in who I am.
Morín and Falcón are two among thousands of students at colleges and
universities in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas who cross the
southern border for their educations.
Many stay in Mexico because its cheaper to live there, while others moved
near the border to continue their educations in the United States after
their parents were deported. Some started crossing in elementary school.
With one foot in each country, these students have the linguistic and
cultural capacity to navigate both the U.S. and its largest trading partner.
U.S. trade with Mexico exceeds $1.7 billion daily, according to the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce.
They refer to themselves as transborder, a term that originally appeared
in academic literature. It wasnt until she read the term in a book that
UCLA doctoral student Estefania Castañeda Pérez found a descriptor she felt
captured her identity. Even as I crossed the border, there was something
about my experience that the term Mexican American didnt encapsulate, she
said.
Transborder students have the capacity to be a bridge for both nations,
added Falcón.
They do that against the background of an anti-immigration climate driven by
questions over whether immigrants take opportunities away from American-born
citizens. That has added obstacles both real and feared, most notably long
delays at border crossings, and made many of these largely unnoticed
students keep an even lower profile.
Falcón has now founded the Transfronterizx Alliance Student Organization, or
TASO, to support students who cross the southern border for education. Morín
is co-president.
Started as a Facebook page to create a virtual community among these
students, the group now shares information about such essential things as
wait times and border closures. It has grown to become an official student
organization at San Diego State, or SDSU, with new chapters being
established at UCLA and San Diego City College.
The exact number of transborder ortransfronterizoin Spanish students at
SDSU is unknown, but TASO is trying to increase their visibility on campus.
With funding from the university, Falcón has designed anally trainingfor
staff, faculty and other students there and at several neighboring
institutions, to educate them about the transborder population. The program
has been made part of the institutions diversity initiatives.
We know that there are disconnects in terms of climate and support, said
J. Luke Wood, associate vice president for faculty diversity and inclusion.
We also have faculty members who may not understand
the additional
stresses and challenges of going across the border and being policed at the
border every day.
Training them and others about this, given where were situated, its got
to be a core focus of the work that were doing or else were missing the
mark, Wood said.
At the University of Texas at El Paso, or UTEP, about 80 percent of students
come from the surrounding region in a tightly integrated binational
community, according to the dean of students, Catie McCorry Andalis.
According to university officials, UTEP has 650 students out of a total of
24,000 who have permanent addresses in Juarez, but the number of border
commuters is likely far higher. Students say its common practice to use the
address of a friend of family member living in the United States to qualify
for resident tuition.
Our entire economy, our way of life, our culture is very contingent on this
very specific border relationship, McCorry Andalis said. As a public
institution, we should be serving our region, and thats not just the U.S.
side of the border.
Some transborder students cross every day, while others live in the U.S.
Mondays through Fridays and return to Mexico on the weekends to visit their
families. Some high school seniors who live on the Mexican border with
California said they have already started crossing because they hope
graduating from a California high school will help them establish residency
in time to start college in the fall.
One 17-year-old high school senior, who asked that his name not be used,
crosses from his home in Tijuana to the Otay Mesa port of entry, where he
joins thousands of others who commute to San Diego for work or school. He
then takes two buses to get to his high school in the South Bay.
The boy carries around a dogeared utility bill showing the address hes used
at school. Although hes a U.S. citizen, hes not a California resident. He
didnt tell his family friends he had used their address, and they sent back
some mail from the school. Now he has to show the bill to prove where he
lives. Another time, his wallet was stolen and he couldnt go to school
because he couldnt cross the border without his passport card.
There arent any good estimates of how many students cross the border every
day, partly because of the gray area they occupy. Most are U.S. passport
holders, but not necessarily U.S. residents. Around 80 percent of students
who cross are U.S. citizens, estimated Castañeda Pérez, who surveyed 869
students crossing the border in San Ysidro and El Paso in 2017 and 2018 as
part of her research for her doctoral dissertation. Others are international
students on F-1 or F-3 visas, which are non-immigrant visas for people who
want to study in the United States, or legal permanent residents.
Many transborder students struggle because they dont easily fit into other
categories. Were a different kind of student because were not DACA
students, Morín said, referring to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
Were not residents who live here. Were not international students either.
We feel invisible.
Added Castañeda Pérez: I felt like I could not express who I was for many
years because of the fear of facing the stigma of crossing the border.
She said education should be seen as a fundamental human right for everyone,
regardless of their status, regardless of where they live.
Some students fear being outed as transborder because of uncertainty over
residency and financial aid. Ilse Quijano, who lives with her aunt in San
Diego, began filling out her financial-aid application while she was
commuting from Tijuana during her freshman year at San Diego City College.
I was scared to even give them any of my information because my parents
dont pay taxes here [in the United States], said Quijano, who has since
transferred to SDSU.
San Diego States Dean of Students Randy Timm said that his office does not
determine residency status. Its very possible that you have California
residency, youve established it, and youre using that as your location
where federal mail is going, but then living across the border as well, he
said.
McCorry Andalis said theres lots of different criteria you can use to
establish residency and pointed to the official UTEP policy.
Many, like Castañeda Pérez, are the first in their families to attend
college. She remembers doing her homework in the car on the way to middle
school in the United States every day. This was when I really started to
resent crossing the border. But my mom told me that crossing for me was
going to be the only way we could achieve social mobility, she said.
While the border crossing has always entailed early mornings and long wait
times, recent slowdowns have made the commute even more fraught. Sara
González-Quintero, a recent SDSU graduate who started crossing in elementary
school, has always had some anxiety about crossing, but she said she wasnt
afraid until 2016.
When the barbed wire started and I actually saw the border as a militarized
zone, that was the first time where I was extremely scared,
González-Quintero said.
Cassandra Adame said that when she first started crossing the border to
attend UTEP, where she is now a senior, it was hard to deal with the
constant questioning she faced every morning even though Im American.
Students at both UTEP and San Diego State report extended wait times in the
last few months as border patrol officers have been diverted from ports of
entry.
María Galindo, a freshman mechanical engineering major at UTEP, has been
crossing since high school. When President Donald Trump threatened to shut
down the entire southern border at the end of March, she didnt want to skip
class, but she had nowhere to stay in El Paso. Everyone that I know that
lives in Juarez and goes to school in El Paso, we were all really, really
scared, she said.
Many of Adames U.S. resident classmates arent even aware of the ways in
which border closures might impact their transborder peers. They dont even
notice this stuff, she said.
Its not only classmates who dont understand the broader implications of
border closures for students who live in Mexico. Carlos Alonso, a senior at
UTEP, said he has missed or was late to class several times after waiting in
the border line for hours. He emailed his professors to explain, and only
one responded. As a result, his grades have suffered. My professors do not
really show any interest in anything that is going on concerning border
lines, he said.
Some institutions with large transborder populations have made efforts to
reach out to border commuters. UTEP has, for instance, worked with the local
transportation authority to ensure that there are buses from the ports of
entry to the university. In April, it launcheda new websitethat brings
together resources available to transborder students in response to the
possibility of a border shutdown. It issued astatementasking faculty to work
with students who were unable to attend class and offered temporary housing,
virtual counseling and immigration advising.
At Arizona Western College in Yuma, the administration encourages faculty
members to ask students questions and avoid making assumptions when they are
late or miss class. What we try to do as an administration, as far as
working with our faculty, is just letting them know about the realities of
teaching in a border city, said Susanna M. Zambrano, associate dean for
South Yuma County Services. Its quite the opposite of what they might be
assuming, in that the class is so important to students that theyre willing
to wait four hours in line.
Wood has a similar message for his faculty and staff: You should not assume
that a [transborder] student doesnt care, isnt prepared, isnt committed,
he said. Instead, Wood said, faculty should assume that if theyre in your
classroom, they are the most resilient, most determined, most caring and
committed students that you have. Period.
Many wary transborder students still dont trust their institutions. In
December, San Diego State issued a statement acknowledging and offering
support to the transborder population, including temporary housing in case
of further border closures. According to Timm, no students came forward to
accept it.
Quijano said she texted a classmate who could have benefitted, but her
friend was afraid to ask for housing because she uses someone elses address
for her financial aid.
While Morín appreciated the gesture, she noted that it was in response to a
specific event. She said being a transborder student is a daily reality, not
an emergency situation.
Its every day, not just one day.
I mean, I always need a place here to
crash, she said. Were just trying to make our lives better by improving
our education. Its the only thing we want.
This story abouttransborder studentswas produced byThe Hechinger Report, a
nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and
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