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This week’s special message from your Publisher:

The Summer of Bilingualism

arturoNext month we’ll launch a three-month campaign to foster and encourage the use of two languages, Spanish and English, among Latinos in the U.S.

We will flagship personal stories from our members that illustrate its advantages: family, career and business.

And we’ll call them Bilingualism, A Personal Snapshot: from making abuelas happy to escalating the jobs ladder and bridging our communities.

Just send your stories to [email protected], and we will get back to you quickly with any editing suggestions.
Don’t Monolingual me. Be Bilingual.

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By Ana Gonzalez-Barrera and Jens Manuel Krogstad

There were 11.7 million immigrants from Mexico living in the U.S. in 2014, and about half of them were in the country illegally, according to Pew Research Center estimates. Mexico is the country’s largest source of immigrants, making up 28% of all U.S. immigrants.

With President Donald Trump’s administration taking steps to reduce the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. — including through the construction of a wall at the southern border — here’s what we know about illegal immigration from Mexico:

1. The number of Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. illegally has declined by more than 1 million since 2007. In 2014, 5.8 million unauthorized immigrants from Mexico lived in the U.S., down from a peak of 6.9 million in 2007. Despite the drop, Mexicans still make up about half of the nation’s 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants (52% in 2014).

2. More non-Mexicans than Mexicans were apprehended at U.S. borders in fiscal year 2016 for the second time on record (the first was in fiscal 2014.) In fiscal 2016, 192,969 Mexicans were apprehended, a sharp drop from a peak of 1.6 million apprehensions in 2000. The decline in apprehensions reflects the decrease in the number of unauthorized Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S.

3. Mexicans were deported from the U.S. 242,456 times in 2015 – up from 169,031 in 2005, but down from a recent high of 309,807 in 2013. The increase over the past decade is due in part to a 2005 shift in policy that increased the chances of being deported following apprehension in the border region. Prior to that change, many unauthorized immigrants were returned without a formal deportation order.

4. Mexican unauthorized immigrants are more likely to be long-term residents of the U.S. As of 2014, 78% had lived in the U.S. for 10 years or more, while only 7% had been in the country for less than five years. By comparison, 52% of unauthorized immigrants from countries other than Mexico had lived in the U.S. for at least a decade as of 2014, while 22% had lived in the U.S. for less than five years.

5. Unauthorized immigrants from Mexico make up at least 75% of the total unauthorized immigrant population in three states. This is the case in New Mexico (91%), Idaho (87%) and Arizona (81%). In California, Mexicans make up 71% of the state’s unauthorized immigrant population, and they numbered more than 1.6 million in 2014 – the highest total of any state.

Note: This post was originally published July 5, 2015, and has been updated.

Topics: Immigration, Immigration Trends, Mexico, Unauthorized Immigration

Ana Gonzalez-Barrera is a senior researcher focusing on Hispanics, immigration and demographics at Pew Research Center.

Jens Manuel Krogstad is a writer/editor focusing on Hispanics, immigration and demographics at Pew Research Center.

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Dear Friend,

I wanted you to know that an investigation we published on Friday in collaboration with The Washington Post has already had impact.

The story revealed that 19 state juvenile-justice agencies regularly or sometimes require parents to pay for the cost of their children’s incarcerations. Counties in another 28 states also routinely engage in the practice. These costs are often crippling to families already struggling with poverty and with the trauma of seeing a son or daughter in jail.

Parents are charged even if the case against their child is ultimately dismissed. For example, when Mariana Cuevas’s son was released from a California jail after being locked up in a juvenile hall for more than 300 days for a homicide he did not commit, the state still tried to collect $10,000 for his imprisonment.

The City of Philadelphia, where the story was focused, announced a few hours after our story was published that it would end the practice of charging parents who have kids in detention. You can read our post on this development here. You can also watch an NBC News report on our investigation here.

Juvenile defense lawyers, law students, and other advocates have been working around the country to change these punitive laws and regulations. In Philadelphia, it was students at Temple University’s Justice Lab who first identified the problem, but our story clearly prodded officials to finally take the plunge. As Laura Fine, co-founder of the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project in Philadelphia, told reporter Eli Hager upon hearing the news, “Nothing about the legal landscape has changed in the 10 months since we first brought this to them, yet it happened today. I don’t think it could be clearer that the timing of the national attention was what did this.”

That’s what The Marshall Project was founded to accomplish. Thank you for your support of our work.

My best,

Bill Keller
Editor-in-Chief, The Marshall Project

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By Charles C. Camosy, Crux

[Editor’s note: Born in Colombia, Hosffman Ospino is an assistant professor of Hispanic ministry and religious education at Boston College. He’s considered one of the most influential and creative interpreters of Latino/a Catholic experiences in the United States. Crux contributor Charles Camosy recently spoke to him about those realities, and the following is the result of their exchange.]

Camosy: I’ve been in the room when you’ve powerfully challenged overwhelmingly-white Catholic groups to reckon with the fact that “the Catholic Church in the United States does not look like this.” What does it look like?

Ospino: Correct. The Catholic Church is the United States is an incredibly diverse body in almost every regard. But perhaps the most significant expression of diversity at this very moment of our history is demographic and cultural diversity.

By the middle of the twentieth century, about 90 percent of U.S. Catholics self-identified primarily as Euro-American, white. They were largely the children and grandchildren of immigrants who had migrated mainly from Europe since the early 1800s. Most of these Catholics had by and large integrated into the U.S. culture, culturally and linguistically.

About half a century later, we have an almost entirely different demographic picture. Barely half of all U.S. Catholics are Euro-American, white, and in nearly every region of the country where Catholicism is growing in large numbers, especially the West and the South, this group is already a numeric minority.

More than 40 percent of U.S. Catholics are Hispanic, about 5 percent Asian and Pacific Islander, about 4 percent Black, and close to 1 percent Native American. Millions of Hispanics, Asians, and Black Catholics in the country are immigrants. This incredible diversity is reshaping the entire American Catholic landscape, culturally, linguistically, pastorally, spiritually, etc. You name it!

Though the energy stemming from this diversity is very obvious at the grassroots, especially in parishes, it is not mirrored at the level of leadership and the structural make up of many of our Catholic organizations, where Euro-American, white Catholics are noticeably more represented.

We need to do more to foster cultural and racial/ethnic diversity at the leadership and structural level of our Catholic institutions. Everyone wins when we do this. It is a unique opportunity to capitalize on the many gifts that Catholics from different backgrounds bring to building strong faith communities in this country.

In what ways does cultural diversity challenge the experience of being Catholic in the United States today?

Cultural, racial, and even linguistic diversity as we are experiencing it now in the church is here to stay for the foreseeable future. We cannot naively close our eyes and ignore it. But we must understand the phenomenon.

Let’s take Hispanic Catholics as an example, since this is the group that is presently having the most noticeable impact in the redefinition of the U.S. Catholic experience. Two thirds of Hispanics are U.S.-born, a fact that sometimes gets lost in many church circles. However, we know that there are about 20 million Hispanics who are immigrants, and about two thirds of them are Catholic. They are raising children in bilingual and bicultural homes. The vast majority of these children were born in this country.

We are witnessing the emergence of a very large body of Catholics for whom a connection to the Spanish language and self-identifying as Hispanic are very important. They are sustained by many expressions of Hispanic/Latino spirituality and intellectual life. Most of these Catholics are also English-speaking and American in the sense of citizenship. In many parts of the country, to speak of U.S. Catholicism is to make reference to the Hispanic Catholic experience.

It is important to realize that 60 percent of U.S. Catholics younger than eighteen are Hispanic. This is not a number that we can afford to ignore as a church! If we do the math, just in a few years, the majority of Catholics in the United States will share a Hispanic background. They will be writing the next chapter of the history of U.S. Catholicism, but they will not-and should not-do it alone.

It will be a chapter written in close collaboration with Catholics who are Asian, Black, Native American, and White. I see many possibilities, but we need to start listening to their voices at all levels in the life of the church.

If the new generation of Catholic immigrants and their children are playing such an important role in redefining U.S. Catholicism, as you say, how is this happening?

There are two dynamics to keep in mind.

One the one hand, as long as there are millions of Catholic immigrants in our communities, we have the pastoral and moral obligation to serve them, usually in the languages they speak and honoring the culture in which they discern their relationship with Jesus Christ. These people are not going to assimilate overnight. They may never fully assimilate, as was the case with many immigrants in earlier generations. This is just a fact of life.

It took about 150 years for European Catholic immigrants and their descendants to almost fully integrate into the larger U.S. culture. Why shouldn’t we give this new generation of Catholic immigrants and their descendants the time they need to do likewise? I constantly repeat in my presentations, “the Church exists in this country to evangelize, not to Americanize.”

On the other hand, there is already a massive process of integration into the U.S. culture taking place among many present-day Catholic immigrants, and more evidently among their children and grandchildren. The question for us and our ecclesial structures is how are we integrating these new voices in our communities, organizations, and leadership structures?

We must not wait too long to do this. There is evidence that millions of young Hispanics are choosing not to self-identify as Catholics any longer. They are drifting away. This is a major loss.

What does all of this mean for the future of right/left political and theological polarization in the U.S. Church?

Not long ago, the New York Times invited me to reflect on whether it is possible to speak of a “Latino Catholic vote.” The question almost automatically evoked the polarized political and ideological climate in the country, including the U.S. Catholic community. My answer was very simple: there is no such a thing as a homogeneous Latino Catholic vote, just as there is not a homogeneous Latino community.

Hispanic Catholics are very diverse at every level, including culture, language, politics, and even the way we discern reality. This is part of being human. However, the ideological polarization that characterizes many dynamics among U.S. Catholics, when read from a Hispanic perspective, raises two important concerns.

On the one hand, ideological polarization ignores the struggles and immediate needs of millions of Hispanics in the country. It is difficult to engage in the so-called “culture wars” when most of your energy goes to struggle with poverty or to confront discrimination or avoid being deported or support your loved ones in another country. Who is with those who struggle?

On the other, Hispanics are inheriting faith communities deeply fragmented because of polarization. There is often the expectation that everyone must take a hard position to participate in any meaningful conversation. This has a major impact upon many immigrants who are mainly looking for churches as safe places to weather the many storms that shape their lives. Most importantly, it can turn young Hispanics away.

Polarization threatens the future vibrancy of our Catholic faith communities and our families.

Where can Crux readers learn more about the Hispanic Church in the United States?

Hispanic Ministry in Catholic Parishes, a report from a national study I conducted on parishes serving Hispanic Catholics.

Hispanic Ministry in the 21st Century: Urgent Matters (Convivium Press), a book I co-edited that addresses important topics emerging in pastoral settings serving Hispanics.

Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church (Princeton University Press), an excellent overview written by Timothy Matovina

I would also encourage Crux readers to become more familiar with the resources accompanying the process of the Fifth National Encuentro of Hispanic/Latino Ministry: www.vencuentro.org

Your Editor Asks: Is Polarization a luxury?

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By NICK PACHELLI, The New York Times

Sunlight broke through the low-hanging clouds over the public tennis courts at Palm Park, 15 minutes from Ernesto Escobedo’s family home. But Neto, as he is called, packed his eight rackets back in his bag. It had started raining again. He looked west, where it was brighter.

“Let’s go try Carson — see if the courts are dry there,” he said before heading for the United States Tennis Association training center, 20 miles away.

It was the day before Escobedo was to fly to Acapulco for the Abierto Mexicano Telcel, Mexico’s most prestigious professional tournament, where a wild-card entry awaited him.

“It’s like a hometown tournament,” Escobedo said. “My aunts and uncles and cousins will all be there.”

His journey toward the top 100 in the tennis rankings has its roots in a backyard in Mexico, where his grandfather taught his father how to play. Nurtured on the public courts of Los Angeles, Escobedo, 20, is blazing a trail for young Mexican-Americans with a sporting narrative similar to the Williams sisters’ in its genesis and improbability.

Some of the factors that make Escobedo a top prospect are not hard to spot. There is the serve that can exceed 135 miles per hour; the penetrating power of his forehand; the strength in his 6-foot-1, 180-pound frame; the assured way he wields his Babolat racket; and the precision with which he swings through the baseline.

Since the summer’s grass-court season, Escobedo has qualified for the main draw at two ATP Tour events and won two tournaments on the Challenger Tour, the second-tier pro circuit. Along the way, he beat other young Americans like Frances Tiafoe, Stefan Kozlov and Ryan Harrison.

Ranked 113th in the world last week, Escobedo reached the second round at the United States Open in August and at the Australian Open in January.

“He has shown he can play and beat the best players,” said Peter Lucassen, Escobedo’s coach. “Now it’s about being as consistent as possible at a high level.”

He added, “We’re working on taking over the point, attacking more.”

Escobedo’s forceful style is not unusual in the men’s game, but he differs from most of his peers in that he never left home to advance his career.

Today’s paradigm for player development often involves tennis academies, where young phenoms may leave behind their families and traditional education.

But Escobedo continued to live at home with his parents and his two older sisters even after turning pro. He turned down an offer to move to a Florida tennis academy at 14.

“He wasn’t ready,” his mother, Cristina Escobedo, said.

His father, Ernesto Jr., said: “And I’d miss him too much. So we had to just follow what we could do ourselves.”

The Escobedos committed to developing Neto’s game on public courts around Los Angeles with a $5,000-per-year budget. The Lawn Tennis Association of Britain has estimated that the cost of developing a player from age 5 to 18 is more than $300,000.

“Ernesto is a great example that you don’t have to play in a private club or country club to have success,” said Katrina Adams, the president of the U.S.T.A.

Backyard Beginnings

The Escobedos’ living room in West Covina is decorated with memories of a life spent chasing tennis treasures: a shrine to Rafael Nadal; framed photos of the three children with Jimmy Connors, Steffi Graf, Anna Kournikova and Stefan Edberg at the annual tournament in Indian Wells, Calif.; Roger Federer’s shoe, wristbands and shirt from the 2016 Australian Open, perched near one of John McEnroe’s rackets; a parcel of red clay from Roland Garros on the wall next to a stringing machine.

Flipping through family albums, Escobedo’s father tapped a photo of himself in knee-high socks hitting against a wall. He was 12.

“This, our tennis, comes from my hometown, from my dad,” Ernesto Jr. said.

In Jerez, Mexico, Ernesto Jr., the oldest of 10 children, and his father built a tennis court in their backyard. It had smaller dimensions than a regulation court and a piece of wire for a net, but it nonetheless molded Ernesto Jr. and his sister Xóchitl into budding tennis players. Xóchitl went on to represent Mexico in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

Ernesto Jr. played in the United States, Europe and Mexico but never earned an ATP point.

“He told me stories of sleeping in tents in parks near the courts with his friends,” Neto said, shaking his head in disbelief while his father laughed.

“Our family, we’ve always been coming from nowhere,” Ernesto Jr. said.

Ernesto Jr. married Cristina in Jerez before moving to the United States. Upon arriving in California, he picked strawberries for $20 a day. He eventually found a job driving for UPS, and he has stayed with the company for nearly 30 years.

Neto, who was born in Los Angeles, became enchanted by tennis before he could walk.

“After my mom dropped my sisters off at school, we’d hit and bounce balls against a wall at their school,” he said.

He used a Spider-Man racket then. “I didn’t know that tennis was a sport rich people played,” Neto said. “I just always knew I was going to play.”

When Neto was 5, his father curbed his work hours to coach him, and in 2001, the Escobedos moved to their current home to be closer to a public tennis facility. With West Covina as their home base, they crisscrossed the Los Angeles area for 12 years, finding new part-time coaches and hitting partners.

Rising Unnoticed

In his junior years, Neto stayed in Southern California. He was able to enter the important Orange Bowl tournament in Florida only once because he lacked the resources to travel. And he was not winning tournaments; he would make the quarterfinals or semifinals and then crash out.

Get the big sports news, highlights and analysis from Times journalists, with distinctive takes on games and some behind-the-scenes surprises, delivered to your inbox every week.

“In those years, so many people said I’m not going to make it,” he said. “I’m too slow. I’m too big. ‘He’s not that good. He doesn’t even have a coach. His coach is his dad.’”

Escobedo turned pro at 17. He had planned to attend the University of Southern California on a full scholarship, but once an offer came through to sign with the agent Andrew Kessler and the K3 Tennis Agency, “it was a no-brainer,” Escobedo said.

Despite Escobedo’s improving performances and rising ranking, he has gone largely unnoticed among the heralded group of players in their late teens and early 20s.

“He’s improved a lot in the last 18 months,” said Brad Gilbert, an ESPN analyst. “I’m impressed that he’s moved up more quietly than some of the others.”

Between bites at his kitchen table, Escobedo said, “I do want to shock people.”

He was looking at a picture from the Twitter account for the Next Gen ATP Finals, a season-ending tournament for 21-and-under players to be held in Milan in November. Alongside top foreign prospects like 20th-ranked Alexander Zverev of Germany were Taylor Fritz, Tiafoe and Jared Donaldson, 21-and-under American players who have been ranked near Escobedo for the past year.

“I see the photo every single day; it’s everywhere,” Escobedo said. “They’re great players, and I think I deserve to be there, too, but I’d rather people be like, ‘Where the hell did this guy come from?’”

Escobedo wants to qualify for the tournament, the first of its kind on the ATP Tour. The top seven under-21 players in the rankings and a wild card will make up the field. Two months into the season, Escobedo was 12th in the race to Milan entering Sunday.

He is no stranger to feeling like an outsider. He is the only Mexican-American man in the top 500, and the first to break into the top 200 since Pancho Gonzales in the 1960s.

Rising through the tennis ranks has also challenged Escobedo to reckon with his cultural identity.

“I actually feel more Mexican than American,” he said. “I’ve always lived in the States, and I’m very happy to represent the U.S. — the U.S.T.A. has been very supportive — but I feel much more at home playing in Mexico. More people know about me there.”

At the United States Open, when Escobedo played Kyle Edmund of Britain in the second round, “even the American fans were going for the British guy,” Escobedo’s sister Evanka said, laughing.

Escobedo does not dwell on it. He acknowledged that his identity as an American and a Mexican would continue to evolve. But in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, Escobedo’s thoughts on the flag that follows him around the world have weighed heavier.

“I felt a little bit embarrassed, just how you could see there’s still racism in the world,” he said.

The election even came up when Escobedo trained with Federer for three weeks in November. “Fed asked me, ‘How did he win?’” Escobedo said of President Trump.

Escobedo has not yet honed his voice on public and political discourse, but he said, “If I won the U.S. Open and was invited to the White House, I wouldn’t go.”

Becoming the best American player and matching the success of his childhood idol, Andy Roddick, is Escobedo’s ultimate goal. Eventually he would like to open a tennis academy in Mexico.

The Escobedo family — father, aunts, uncles and cousins included — convened in Acapulco last week for Neto’s match against Kozlov. They held a sign that read: “Vamos Neto. Porra Jerez!”

Escobedo won, 6-1, 2-6, 6-0, before losing to a fellow American, Steve Johnson, in the second round. Breaking into the top 100 would have to wait.

Next for Escobedo will be this week’s qualifying tournament at another hometown event of sorts, the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells.

“I’ll have less support in Indian Wells than Acapulco,” he said, “but who knows? That might change.”

First, Escobedo returned home to his mother’s cooking; his dogs, Coco and Gucci; and his childhood room, full of tennis posters with handwritten quotations on the back. He will train with Lucassen, his coach, in Carson or on the public courts near his house.

Then he will drive to Indian Wells with his parents and his sisters close behind. His 84-year-old grandfather, Ernesto Sr., who built the tennis court in his backyard in Mexico decades ago, might come, too.

At home, there is little talk of Escobedo’s ranking. His father maintains that he has not looked at it since Escobedo turned pro. Not yet, at least.

“I’ll jump up and down when he breaks the top 100,” Ernesto Jr. said.

He let his gaze drift off. A wide smile broke through.

“Just imagine me: I used to play with my dad and dream about the top 100 on the court in our backyard,” he said. “Then my kid, 30-something years later, makes it happen, and my dad’s still around.”

Your Editor Applauds: Being Binational and Bilingual helps in the age of Trump

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