Like most Americans, David* can work and travel, but until he reached college, he couldn’t do these things because he was undocumented.

David, 35, is an SF State employee and alumnus. He was born in El Salvador. When he was around 6 years old, his parents legally immigrated to the United States because their country's civil war had created a job shortage. So for most of his childhood, David was raised by his grandfather and aunts.

Around the 1980s the war escalated.

“I saw war,” David says. “You’re there, you’re playing outside, you hear gunshots, you run home and hide under bed. My grandfather and people are all beside me. I remember seeing through the crack under the door people running, and hearing shots. Then you go out and see lots of people dead outside. A lot of times people would die and would not be recognized—because they were decapitated and tortured. My grandfather went to the morgue a lot, and I went with him and I saw all the bad things.”

Both sides of the war recruited youth when they turned 12, so his parents sent for him when he was 11.

David said that he came to the United States illegally because he didn’t have enough time to get papers.

“I came with people you hire. There were 10 other adults, mostly men, and me as a little kid, we crossed over Guatemala in a [minibus].”

In Mexico, they were told not to talk to Mexicans lest their accents betray them. In case a Mexican asked them where they came from, the coyotes—people who smuggle the undocumented across the U.S. border for money—told them to name a region of Mexico with an accent similar to their own. They were also told not to leave the bus.

“In a Northern state in Mexico, we stopped for a night. It was really cold. I kept on getting out of bus to go to a taqueria. They will be going all the time ‘You have to be inside the bus.’ But I was really cold. I recall putting socks on my hands— even dirty ones—and wearing all my outfits. I didn’t know it would be so cold [so I hadn’t packed warmer clothes]. No one was there to take care of me. I was nobody’s child.”

They crossed the Rio Grande, a river that forms a natural boundary between Mexico and the United States, at nighttime. They had to take off their clothes and wade through the water while carrying their clothes above their heads. Though the river wasn’t deep or wide—about 7 meters across—David was scared.

He was worried that he would trip and that his clothes would get wet, scared that the Immigration Naturalization Service would catch him, and embarrassed by his own nudity.

When they reached the other side, a car was waiting for them. There were so many people that David ended up in the trunk.

Sometimes the car would stop. The coyotes would tell them to get lost in the plantations and promise to return. The car would leave and return hours later.

One time, David told the runners that he didn’t want to go in the trunk anymore. He had to lay across people’s laps.

After traveling for over two weeks, David reunited with his family. “Then I was with my parents. No more fear. I was happy, joyful.”

He hadn’t seen his father for five years and his mother for three. However after a few days, he started “breaking down.” He no longer wanted to be in America.

“I missed El Salvador," he said. "I missed all my friends. I missed my grandfather. I came to this country and I didn’t have any friends.”

David says that while some undocumented people are afraid of leaving their home, of going to the hospital or the police, as a kid he wasn’t afraid of any of those things.

He said that when his parents told him that he didn’t have papers, as a kid thought "So what?" He didn’t understand what being undocumented meant.

It only hit him in his senior year of high school. His parents thought that he wouldn’t be able to go to university because of his status, and for some time he thought so too. But he learned from a friend that he could go to university. He enrolled at SF State on a scholarship and majored in ethnic studies because he wanted to “learn more about the contributions of people whom I didn’t learn about in high school.”

Sometime in his second or third year of school, he got legalized. David, who is gay, compared becoming legalized to coming out as gay.

“Being gay, being in the closet, you have a fear of being found out. Same thing with being undocumented.”

“[Once you come out as gay] you’re free, you’re yourself, your own fullest potential. Becoming legal—that’s what it like. I can talk to you, I can work in my profession, I can travel. You’re not trapped. Undocumented people wish they could travel. There’s so much to see in this world. They can’t do that.”

After David got his papers, he went back to El Salvador to visit his family and old friends, but he found it difficult to reconnect with them.

David said that he will be starting his master's degree at SF State next year.

*David, who asked that his name be changed to maintain his privacy, said, “I am sharing this because I am legal now after so many years. I know I am speaking for a lot of other students who would like to share their experiences, but who can’t because of the fear factor.”