Smoked Out

The California wildfires were just the beginning of trouble for undocumented immigrants in Sonoma County.

- Maddie Oatman

WHEN HE FIRST smelled smoke, Luis just thought a neighbor was having a barbecue. But the scent lingered, and the 25-year-old aspiring neuroscientist soon learned that a forest fire was barreling straight toward his home in Santa Rosa, California. He dashed out the front door, jumped in his Saturn, and sped toward the highway through fumes so thick they swallowed his headlights. Within hours, Sonoma County’s Tubbs Fire— the most destructive blaze in the state’s history—would incinerate the house Luis shared with his father, sister, and grandparents, as well as about 2,900 of his neighbors’ homes. In coming days, he would think back on the belongings he’d left behind, like the paper lantern his girlfriend had pieced together from origami stars. At least he had grabbed a folder of precious documents—without which, he knew, he might never land a job in the United States.

Luis, who is from Oaxaca, Mexico, came to the United States illegally at the age of nine. Today he is a “Dreamer”—a participant in a program, currently being phased out by the Trump administration, that gives young immigrants temporary permission to live and work in the country even if they came here without documentation. (Luis is not his real name; he requested it be changed out of concern for the safety of his family members.) There were roughly 38,500 undocumented immigrants in Sonoma County, including most of Luis’ family, as of 2013, the most recent year for which statistics are available, and they hold down many of the county’s housecleaning, construction, and vineyard jobs. In the wake of Northern California’s wildfires, many are living a doubly precarious existence—struggling, like everybody else, to deal with tremendous personal and financial destruction, yet also uncertain if they still have any future in this country.