Freedom's Fall

By: Jeff Kelly LowensteinAs a boy, Rafael grew up on a massive ranch in rural Mexico, tending cattle, riding horses and helping to grow corn, beans and many other crops.

Although he loved his home, Rafael longed to come to the United States for more lucrative work. He hoped to send money back home to family and one day return to raise a family of his own.

At 18, he moved toward his vision, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. Five days later he arrived in the Chicago area, near southwest suburban Joliet, where he moved in with an uncle.

But on Wednesday, Aug. 2, 1995, in the middle of his second week of work at Houston Foods Factory in west suburban Bensenville, Rafael’s dreams came to a sudden halt.

Several other workers were moving a 500-pound metal object that was squareshaped, 10-feet high and filled with popcorn. The object slipped and fell toward Rafael, but he neither saw it nor heard it.

The metal object landed squarely on his back. Popcorn spilled everywhere.

Rafael’s back was broken. Paralyzed from the waist down, he will never walk again.

“My life changed totally,” the solidly built Rafael said in Spanish. “It ended, and then after the accident, I lived another life.”

After many years, Rafael—an undocumented immigrant who asked that only his first name be used for this article— has forged a positive and stable new life thanks to his successful lawsuit against his former employer and support from family members. Unlike Rafael, many undocumented workers who are disabled on the job never receive any substantial compensation for their injuries and often feel abandoned and alone.

But Rafael received more than $100,000 to purchase a home and car. For the rest of his life, he gets a monthly check of $1,200. For the first 20 years following the accident, Rafael receives additional payments of $15,000 per year. And the company paid for all of his medical bills for the first five years.

“I think we did a very good job trying to protect Rafael,” said Arturo Jauregui, principal of Jauregui & Associates, who handled his case.

“[Rafael’s case] broke my heart,” said Jauregui, a former civil rights attorney.“He was 18 years old and in the prime of youth. I really went out of my way for him to provide him a sense of security for his future.”

Jauregui hired an economist to assess what Rafael would have made during the course of his working lifetime and engaged in lengthy negotiations with Houston Foods’ insurance company. “The other side was reasonable but had to be convinced,” Jauregui says.

On the road to being convinced, the insurance company made many offers, but Jauregui counseled Rafael and his family to wait until the right one came— nearly five years later.

Rafael didn’t have to wait that long for support from family members.

Immediately after the accident, Rafael’s mother came north and spent a full year nursing him back to health before returning to Mexico. Over time, Rafael’s four brothers all left the family ranch and came to the Chicago area to care for their fallen sibling. And the uncle who took Rafael in gave him a needed pep talk— essentially telling him to get out of the house and live his life.

Fabricio Balcazar, a professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago, observed that undocumented immigrants with family in the United States are often better positioned than day laborers, many of whom are alone in the U.S. and at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

Even with all the family help, Rafael’s first years after the accident were rocky.

He struggled to accept that he would never walk again. He missed dancing and riding horses. And, confined to his uncle’s house, he felt isolated and craved meaningful interaction with others.

A turning point came five years after his injury, when he went skydiving for the first time.

Jumping out of a plane at 14,000 feet had seemed impossible to Rafael; but the rush of the air on his cheeks as he whizzed through the air and the calm that filled him after his parachute had unfolded were both exhilarating and liberating.“I realized that I could do anything I wanted,” he said.

Since then, he has wanted to do a lot.

He has studied English, drives a car equipped with hand controls and lifts weights three times a week.

On May 1, Rafael was in the front line of about two dozen people with disabilities, pumping his fist and advocating for citizenship for all undocumented people.

More than a decade after his accident, Rafael feels at peace with the life he has fashioned in a country where he never intended to stay, but has become his home.

“In Mexico, I would never be able to leave the house,” Rafael said, explaining that the ranch’s terrain is completely inaccessible to wheelchair users. “Here, my life is better.”