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Padilla Peralta, Dan-el. Biography.
Dominicans (Dominican Republic). United States. Biography.
Immigrants. United States. Biography.
Illegal aliens. United States. Biography.
Seeking medical care for a complicated pregnancy, Peralta's mother and father brought him with them to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic. Born in the U.S., his younger brother automatically had the documentation that Peralta and his mother lacked. When his father returned to the DR, Peralta and his mother struggled with poverty complicated by their status, finally settling in low-income housing in Harlem. A volunteer at the shelter library recognized Peralta's intelligence and helped him get a scholarship to Collegiate, the nation's oldest private school. Peralta spent his youth projecting two very different sides of himself, the tough exterior he showed to the neighborhood gang-bangers and the hunger for knowledge he displayed at school. Between a very protective mother and his own ambition, he succeeded despite the lack of documentation that limits his ability to work, to travel, and to get financial aid. At Princeton and at the top of his class, he revealed his undocumented status in a profile in the Wall Street Journal. Peralta offers an inspiring personal story of the hardships faced by undocumented families.
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I took Mom’s call outside my school’s computer room, where I’d been proofreading the school newspaper.
“What? What happened? Why did they think we had drugs? Did they say?”
“Mi’jo, it’s going to be OK now. They made a big mistake. They had one cop who speaks a little Spanish explain to me what went wrong. They’d received a call from someone who told them dealers were storing drugs in an apartment in our building. The cops thought the informant said ‘Apartment 2B,’ so they came to our apartment—”
“So they were there when you got home from church?”
“They’d knocked down the door. They were searching everything. They searched my bedroom, the table where I have the candles for the santos, the living room, the kitchen, the bedrooms.”
“Do they still think we’re involved with drug dealers?”
“Ay, no, mi’jo. So they’re searching everywhere and I’m telling them over and over again that they’re wrong, that we’re a family of God and I’m just a single mother raising two children. I showed them all your books, I told them you go to a famous private school on full scholarship. But they wouldn’t believe anything I told them. They just kept asking where the drugs were. But finally, finally, thank you, Virgin Mary, one of the police officers took out his radio and spoke with the police officers standing outside our building. That’s when another cop came up to me and said they were extremely sorry. That it had all been a mistake, that they were supposed to be investigating another apartment instead. And you should have seen them, Dan-el, how nice they were when they realized their mistake. They’re even going to pay to have our door fixed.”
“Those sinvergüenza cops!”
“Dan-el! They were doing their job, my son. It’s over now.”
“Did they ask about our immigration status?”
“Thank God no, my son. They didn’t ask me for papeles or anything like that.”
I let out a small sigh of relief. Mom continued:
“But I must have interrupted you, my son, you’re still at school working on the newspaper, right? Everything’s OK, I just wanted you to know what had happened. Get back to what you were doing and I’ll see you at home for dinner. Dios te bendiga.”
I returned to the computer room. One of my friends asked me if anything was wrong.
“Me?” I replied. “Nah, kid, I’m good.”
Excerpted from Undocumented: A Dominican Boy's Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League by Dan-el Padilla Peralta
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
An undocumented immigrant’s journey from a New York City homeless shelter to the top of his Princeton class
Dan-el Padilla Peralta has lived the American dream. As a boy, he arrived in the United States legally with his family. Together they had traveled from Santo Domingo to seek medical care for his mother. Soon the family’s visas lapsed, and Dan-el’s father eventually returned home. But Dan-el’s courageous mother decided to stay and make a better life for her bright sons in New York City.
Without papers, she faced tremendous obstacles. While Dan-el was only in grade school, the family joined the ranks of the city’s homeless. Dan-el, his mother, and brother lived in a downtown shelter where Dan-el’s only refuge was the meager library. At another shelter he met Jeff, a young volunteer from a wealthy family. Jeff was immediately struck by Dan-el’s passion for books and learning. With Jeff’s help, Dan-el was accepted on scholarship to Collegiate, the oldest private school in the country.
There, Dan-el thrived. Throughout his youth, Dan-el navigated two worlds: the rough streets of East Harlem, where he lived with his brother and his mother and tried to make friends, and the ultra-elite halls of a Manhattan private school, where he immersed himself in a world of books and rose to the top of his class.
From Collegiate, Dan-el went on to Princeton, where he made the momentous decision to come out as an undocumented student in a Wall Street Journal profile a few months before he gave the salutatorian’s traditional address in Latin at his commencement.
Undocumented is essential reading for the debate on immigration, but it is also an unforgettable tale of a passionate young scholar coming of age in two very different worlds.
Praise for Undocumented:
“Undocumented is an impassioned counterargument to those who feel, as did some of Peralta’s more xenophobic classmates, that ‘illegals’ are good-for-nothings who take jobs from Americans and deserve to be kicked out of the country. No one who reads this story of a brilliant young man and his proud mother will automatically equate undocumented immigrant with idle parasite. That stereotype is something else we shouldn’t take for granted.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Dan-el Padilla Peralta’s story is as compulsively readable as a novel, an all-American tall tale that just happens to be true. From homeless shelter to Princeton, Oxford, and Stanford, through the grace not only of his own hard work but his mother’s discipline and care, he documents the America we should still aspire to be.” —Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter, President of the New America Foundation