Because he was separating families. I remember just telling my mom, "I don't want to go back to school if that means putting you at risk, or putting one of my brothers at risk, I just don't want to go back." And since my father's deportation process was still—we were still going through that as well. I just had to go with my mom to a couple of hearings with her and translate what they were saying and all of the information and all of that.

I used to give my mom crap about that, because I was like, "Why couldn't you just start your life right here? What's so wrong about this? That you put us through all this stuff that we have nothing over there?" And then I realized when I came over here—I actually cried, because I'm like, "Damn, she did all that for us to have a better life."

He was telling me it was 3,500, but the landlord was keeping 2,500 and giving him 1,000 of it. And I had found out, because the own landlord lady told me, and I had to move and I had to lose my job.

That was it. I still got the paper. I got all my voluntary departure, everything.

At that time, I just wanted to do good for my family and try and grow up, because I always took everything as a joke. I feel like I'm still 18 and I'm 26 already. I feel like I didn't have a chance to live my childhood.

So every time he would tell me to do something, I'd get so mad. I just want to punch him in the face. And it sucked, man, because he would always try to tell me stuff—he would do it for my own good.

Slowly I started saying because of one decision that she had made, all our lives got messed up, even if she wanted to or not, point blank period. But then I didn't think on both sides.

And I liked it, because my parents would have to suffer. That's the sucky thing about it. Looking back at it now, I put my mom through a lot of stuff, and it sucks.

When you have kids young, you think you want something, but you don't know. It's just like you think you like the person but you don't like them.

The cops looked at that and they're like, "Wow, you're so young, but yet still you're family orientated."

And then when I had my first kid, I was like, "Nope, I'm not going to give him the life that I have." And he was a big motivation. My first kid was a really big motivation to just get on it.

I feel like I kind of took the burden of kind of being the man of the house that, that kind of just wore me down. So my brothers and sisters seen that and I was kind of like the black sheep, but I was like an example. Like, "Oh, don't be like him." So I feel like I wasn't there to help them, or to actually guide them like a big brother should, but at least I was like, "Okay, don't be like him." You know what I mean?

I didn't really have a relationship with my family. When there was a family events or anything, I felt like an outcast. I would never go to them. Christmas, I was always in my room. Every little... It's just weird man. Everything messed me up. I feel like traumatic. Just the trauma of everything.

We didn't know what to do. There was no... Just got to go back to the old things that we were doing. But luckily, I was able to cut hair and do tattoos, and I was able to get by.

I wanted to do better for myself and for my family, and I felt like that was like a big motivation right there. That push you just need, because you see stuff and you're like, "Dude, I hope that when I have kids, they don't have to go through that." And yeah, that was the push that kind of—

So I look up to that man a lot, because he's done a lot of sacrifices. At the same time, we're like the push he needed. So we both helped each other out.

Yeah. My stepdad. She got with a guy before that and had a kid and then she got married to my stepdad.

Yes. A lot of them. A lot of things. If we didn't do, they probably would have had to do, because if it wasn't me, it would've been the next one. And they did have to go through that stuff too, in a way, because sometimes I couldn't do it, because I'd be in school doing something really, really important.

So sometimes I would have to miss school, sometimes I wouldn't go to school. So then it was chaos.

I was used to it at least, because growing up my mom didn't have a job so she couldn't provide for us even if she wanted to, because she's illegal. So what we would do is we would make fake CDs, and every morning I would just wake up, go to different little towns and stuff, sell CDs.

So, I was thinking like, "Why do you want us back? You say you didn't want us.” Little did I know all that. She told me all this stuff that happened and I just started busting down and crying. And I was always mean to my little stepsister too. But once I learned about how my dad, when she was a newborn, put her in the closet with my mom—got my mom butt naked and put her in the closet—and left her there and then took us to Texas… I used to be mean to my little sister, but after I heard that, I was just like—me and her just got close and stuff.

So yeah, those two years being away from her, my dad had lied to us and said that she didn't want us anymore because she had another kid on the way. And yeah, my dad didn't care. He just lied to us and said that my mom didn't want us.

He took us to Texas for two years. We were actually on the news as missing children. If you look me up, I have all our photos. We were gone for two years, and the reason that they found us was because my dad was actually trying to rob a wheel store—rim store.

My dad was already in the States. But a couple of years passed after we crossed the border, my mom and my dad didn't get along, and my dad was really controlling and abusive.

But I looked for a job. I was blessed to find a job actually with my stepdad. My stepdad did all the solar stuff—solar panels.

I could see them--that they were advancing in life, and I was still in the same spot. So I asked my mom if I could get a job, and that's when she broke it down to me that I wasn't even from here. And that was right there like a slap in the face.

With my parents? My mother, yes. She doesn't like to talk about it. The older I get, the more she opens up, but it's not something that she likes to talk about. It was never in front of us, it was behind closed doors. I thank my father. He's a piece of shit, but I thank him for at least having the thought of not wanting to traumatize us. So yes, it was behind closed doors, but the more I get out of my mom, it was a lot of emotional abuse as well, a lot. I think there was some physical abuse. My mom's never touched upon it, but that's what happened. And then we got to Chicago.

Mike: Because this is the reason that I moved, my dad was telling me that rent was one thing, but he was just telling the landlord that he knew to charge me extra. He was telling me it was 3,500, but the landlord was keeping 2,500 and giving him 1,000 of it. And I had found out, because the own landlord lady told me, and I had to move and I had to lose my job.

Mike: Yeah. Teletech. I had to quit though because I was moving. I didn't have enough money, because I feel like over here when people know that you're not from here—or that you're from over there—they take advantage. And I feel like my dad kind of took advantage of me. He basically said that things were one price, but they were totally different.

Mike: So they were like, "Dude, you got to do something. You either going to jail or to fight it, the case. But you're going to jail. You've got to be in jail and you can't be out while you're fighting this case, or you do a voluntary departure and you go." At that time I felt like I wasn't any good to anybody. I didn’t want to be a burden on my family." So I just left. This is just something that I felt like I had to do. I knew if I ran away, I was never going to be able to provide for my kids, because I was always going to have to try to find a way to provide for myself. And I didn't want that for them. So I just did a voluntary departure. I just said, "Screw it."

Mike: It was gang members. I used to hang out with people that they didn't care for themselves. I remember walking into my friend's house and the house was just like, "Oh my God." It was like a tornado went in and I usually don't hang out with people like this. I was so scared just being in that house and I just started getting used to it, because those are the people that I could not relate to, but I had something in common like, "Okay if you're not ish, then I'm not an ish either."Mike: So we relate and I feel like kind of adopted. They kind of adopted me. The streets adopted me kind of in a way. I didn't really have a relationship with my family. When there was a family events or anything, I felt like an outcast. I would never go to them. Christmas, I was always in my room. Every little... It's just weird man. Everything messed me up. I feel like traumatic. Just the trauma of everything.

Mike: Yeah. But we were used to it though. I was used to it at least, because growing up my mom didn't have a job so she couldn't provide for us even if she wanted to, because she's illegal. So what we would do is we would make fake CDs, and every morning I would just wake up, go to different little towns and stuff, sell CDs.

So, but I did a voluntary departure, because I want to see my kids. I got two kids actually. So I want to see my kids and I want to do it legally.

And my mom was—I feel like a lot of Mexican women and men, they have something against black folks even if you want to or not. I feel like that's racist too, because my mom would always be like, "Why do you hang out with them? Why do you do this? Why do you do that?"

And it took a whole month for the cops to come to my house. So I was with my two little brothers and my little sister was born by that time. She was like three, four. We stayed a whole month with nobody just by ourselves in the house. And I remember this—

And I remember it was me, my mother, my two little brothers—my sisters weren't born at the time—and the two coyotes, the people that cross you.

When I was really young, I had gotten accident that required surgery and I needed to get that surgery done, so when I went to the hospital and get it done there was actually a couple of people from a criminal organization that were supposed to, I guess, kill somebody in there. I remember this like it was yesterday. I had a little breathing mask on and the doctor was telling me to breathe when he counted the eight, I could just hear the gunshots.

Luisa: Yes. There came a point. We were in the [Pause] process of getting our permanent residency card in order to be able to go to school, and the lawyer let my mother know that me and my sister—my other sister—were not going to make it because once you hit eighteen, you're no longer under the case that you originally filed, so the best option for us would be adoption. We would be adopted by an American citizen in order to get our American status fixed, and that was something my mom and I contemplated for a long, long time, and she was going to go through with it, but my dad put a huge stop to that and was like, "That's not happening. You're stupid. That's not a thing. These are my kids. You're not letting that happen."Luisa: It was going to be a family member, not a close family member, but these were the lengths that you go through to try to get through this. I didn't have a normal childhood. I never got to learn to drive. I didn't go to drivers ed. I didn't get to travel with my best friend to DisneyLand because my mom was so scared of—

We arrived to ____ California. We arrived at an apartment that we were sharing with about eight other people—my grandparents, my sisters and I, my mother, my uncles, then eventually my uncle's wife. One of my uncles got the opportunity to move to Chicago—a job opportunity—so he moved. I think after my parents divorced, all of my uncles saw us as their kids, because two of the ones that really took care of us never really had kids, so they loved us and they brought us in.

Yes, my dad hired somebody to find us. My mom really did not leave any trace at all. She just pretty much left like a thief in the night, literally [Chuckles]. They eventually tracked us down and I got a phone call. We got a phone call. I think it was one of my grandparents who answered. Very reluctantly, they handed over the phone and it was my dad and I remember crying. I remember being hysterical. I remember being like, "Oh, my God. This is my dad. He's here. This is my dad. He's not gone.” It's weird, but I thought it was two different worlds and, in this world, I no longer can have my dad. That was the way I started to cope with it. The States were not my dad and this is where my dad was, so we were on different planets now. It was not something that was possible.

My mom, she started working for this store [unclear] and she was doing her design school, and they specialized in Muslim attire and my mom was like, "You know what? I'm going to be independent," so she moves aside. She starts her own thing, and she starts making a bunch of clothes.

Within three to six months. It didn't take that long … immediately kind of. I think one of my uncles took it upon himself to take care of us, and since my mom … my mom at the time, we did not know she had a tumor in the back of her brain. Right where her brain stem is, she had a huge tumor there and we had no idea. Nobody knew. She doesn't remember a lot of this. I don't know if it's because of the emotional trauma or because of the tumor, but once we got to Chicago, it was evident that something was wrong with my mother and she started going to the doctor.

The apartment that we moved into in California was a one-bedroom apartment. It was a big complex and I remember it. There was a pool in the middle and there were a lot of families like us that shared a one-bedroom apartment. And there were eight to twelve people in this one space, and we were trying to find something bigger, but it was impossible.

It occurs to me that the Clubhouse management actually cares very little about the long-term fates of these kids.

The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately.

Work-life balance However, I recently understood that while we were working on the game, I broke the one and only rule I set for the founders of the company: always family first. My wife was expecting our second child and I was working long days at the office, and I became obsessed with making sure the game is as good as possible. The same probably applies to everyone in the team, since we shared love and passion for the franchise.

Will it also help accomplish another goal — communicating to my students that a classroom of learners is, in my mind, a sort of family?

On the “lows” side, I’d say the worst thing was the impact of not being present enough for my family. I was working a full-time job and doing faastRuby on nights and weekends. Here I want to give a big shout out to my wife. She supported me through this and didn’t cut my head off in the process.

Fexeel ba kër gi bañ ñàkk alkol.

He married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 1923, and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret.

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