Natalia Alamdari
Fellow, Us@250
A Chapter of: Miles to Go: Stories of Us at 250
Marco鈥檚 Journey
As others sleep, a Nebraska high schooler survives the graveyard shift.听
Editor鈥檚 note: This essay was originally published by 听on December 13, 2024, and is the winner of the . It has been lightly edited to adhere to house style.
Photo by Rebecca S. Gratz for the Flatwater Free Press
His eyes are tired from scanning the conveyor belt. His feet and back are sore after hours of standing in his steel-toed boots. His brain is fried from searching for faulty welding and chipped paint on the more than 1,000 metal pieces that whiz past him on the belt during the graveyard shift.
Marco Guti茅rrez has spent the past eight hours inspecting tiny parts that will become car seats in Ford F-150s and Chevy Malibus.
Before that, he put in a shift at Panda Express, cooking huge batches of fried rice and crispy orange chicken.
It鈥檚 now 7 a.m. on a Wednesday. The sun is starting to peek out over the Camaco manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Columbus.听
Marco has been working for nearly 15 hours. Now it鈥檚 time to go to school.
A senior at Schuyler Central High School, Marco is one of the dozens鈥攎aybe hundreds鈥攐f Schuyler students who work long, demanding full-time jobs when most Nebraska teenagers are sleeping.
Photo by Rebecca S. Gratz for the Flatwater Free Press
In communities across the state and country, in places where meatpacking or manufacturing are an economic backbone, immigrant teenagers do this middle-of-the night work, jobs often unknown to their teachers and principals.
They work to send money back home to their families鈥20-year-old Marco sends paychecks back to his parents in Guatemala. They work to pay back whoever helped them journey to the border. They work to cover legal fees, rent, food for themselves and their younger siblings, to survive.
Marco and many others here are stuck in immigration limbo, waiting for judges to decide whether to grant them asylum or refugee status. With the election of Donald Trump, who has promised mass deportations, their future in Nebraska, and this country, feels to them like it could vanish any instant.
No one at Schuyler Central has a good count of how many students work full-time. A former principal estimates at least 40. Teachers whose classrooms are filled with students new to the country guess as high as 200鈥攔oughly a third of the student body in this school of 623.听
It鈥檚 obvious when they haven鈥檛 had much rest, teachers say. The teenagers start to look like old men, droopy with exhaustion.
Jazmyn Flores has watched her students sleep through first period, their bodies aching from working all night in a factory or bone weary from after-school construction jobs.听
She wakes them up and wonders, 鈥淗ow are they going to learn?鈥澨
**
Photo by Rebecca S. Gratz for the Flatwater Free Press
Marco has one hour between work and the first school bell.听
On his car dashboard, a picture of his girlfriend looks back at him as he turns the key and starts the 20-minute commute back to Schuyler. A stuffed panda keychain dangles from the rearview mirror of his dark blue sedan鈥攁 gift from Panda Express when he took on the second job a few months ago.
Marco steers toward a light blue house on a tree-lined street, where his older sister, her husband, and their three children live together on the second floor. Marco shares a room with his 18-year-old nephew.
He creeps through the quiet house, his footsteps creaking on the old floorboards, as he tries not to wake his baby nephew. His sister, too, slumbers before the afternoon shift slicing raw meat at Cargill.听
He pulls on his black jacket, grabs his backpack, tiptoes down to the front door and, just before 8 a.m., hitches a ride to school with his girlfriend.听
Photo by Rebecca S. Gratz for the Flatwater Free Press
Schuyler has transformed since 1980, morphing from a mostly white town of roughly 4,000 people to a mostly immigrant community of 6,547. Drawn by jobs at the Cargill meatpacking plant on the western edge of town, immigrants have reshaped Schuyler into a city that鈥檚 nearly three-quarters Latino. Downtown is a mix of Mexican, Central American, and African grocery stores and restaurants sharing the same streets as old dive bars and a Knights of Columbus hall.
Nearly a third of Colfax County residents are foreign born, the highest percentage in the state.听
Cargill and plants in nearby Columbus and Madison have changed the school district, too. Schuyler鈥檚 schools have grown by about 500 kids since 2006, reaching 1,984 last year. Of those, 45 percent of students are learning English as a second language, the highest in the state.听
Samantha Ladwig, the school鈥檚 assistant principal, graduated from Schuyler Central, as did her husband, all their siblings, and their parents. Her two kids are now in the district, too.听
When classmates at Wayne State College heard where she鈥檇 grown up, they鈥檇 ask: 鈥淗ow was that?鈥 They鈥檇 never been in a classroom of people who looked different from them. They figured the blond-haired, blue-eyed white girl must have stood out and hated it.
They were wrong. Ladwig felt drawn back to her hometown, where she鈥檚 still pushing back against misconceptions people have about her students鈥攍ike that none speak English, or that a sleeping student like Marco is lazy when he鈥檚 actually exhausted from an overnight shift.
Growing up in the melting pot of Schuyler made her a better educator, she thinks, and a better person.听
鈥淚 didn鈥檛 look at my classmates any different because of where they came from,鈥 Ladwig said. 鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 anything that was shocking to me. This is home. It鈥檚 what I鈥檝e always known.鈥澨
Marco gets to school and takes his classroom seat in the back row under bright fluorescent lights. It鈥檚 first period. Biology.听
Marco鈥檚 eyelids start drooping 15 minutes in. His head bobs up and down, as he drifts to sleep and blinks back awake while the teacher talks about membranes and molecules, diffusion and osmosis.听
His teacher, Katelyn Wiegand, does not know that Marco works two jobs, because he鈥檚 never told her.听
Photo by Rebecca S. Gratz for the Flatwater Free Press
Wiegand鈥檚 second-period class is made up entirely of immigrant students learning English. She and her students trade words and phrases in English and Spanish. They鈥檒l pull out Google Translate when they run into a complicated scientific word they can鈥檛 translate themselves. The first-year teacher has to remember to speak clearly and slowly. But her students still learn the same material as her English-speaking classes.听
鈥淭hey鈥檙e outperforming my gen ed students,鈥 she said. 鈥淭hey come here wanting a better life, and they have the desire to work hard for it.鈥澨
**
Marco boarded a bus alone to get to Nebraska. It took him from his home country of Guatemala, north through Mexico, to the border where he crossed from Ciudad Ju谩rez into El Paso.听
The journey took two weeks. He was 17.听
He didn鈥檛 attend school for two years before that. Instead, he worked construction jobs in his hometown of Joyabaj to help keep his family afloat.听
He could find a job in Guatemala but made only enough money to cover food. His parents are old, he says, no longer able to work.听
鈥淚 decided to come here to make a better life for me and my family,鈥 he said in Spanish through a translator. 鈥淭hey need my money to survive.鈥澨
After two weeks riding the bus through Mexico, he presented himself to Border Patrol agents and became one of the hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who enter the United States every year seeking asylum.
He lived two more weeks at an El Paso shelter where unaccompanied minors go until they can be placed with a family member or sponsor in the United States. There, he was stuck in a warehouse-type room packed with 500 cots and teenagers.
Then, the U.S. government put him on a plane to Nebraska. His sister in Schuyler would be his guardian.
The United States allows children from Central America to live and work in the country as they await immigration decisions鈥攁 2008 move meant to protect vulnerable kids from dangerous border crossings or getting stranded in Mexican border towns like Ju谩rez. But the red tape is so tangled that even Marco doesn鈥檛 fully understand his path to staying in the country.听
When he moved to Nebraska, Marco joined the ranks of the 553,322 minors placed with a sponsor or guardian in the United States from 2015 to 2023.听
He became one of the 223 placed in Schuyler.
Photo by Rebecca S. Gratz for the Flatwater Free Press
He enrolled in school, a requirement for minors entering the country. Barely speaking any English, he started as a sophomore, surrounded by classmates who spoke Spanish, Arabic, French, Burmese, and indigenous Central American dialects.
Marco is now 20, older than the typical senior. In Nebraska, students can be enrolled in school until they鈥檙e 21. He鈥檚 improved his English so much that he鈥檚 now in class with native English speakers. He鈥檚 on track to graduate in the spring.
鈥淲hen I got him two years ago, he knew nothing….And he began pushing himself,鈥 Flores said. 鈥淗e said, 鈥業 want to learn.鈥 He got his driver鈥檚 license, practiced his English. Marco is a clear example that if you put your mind into it, you will do it. You will achieve it.鈥澨
He secured his work papers, allowing him to work legally in the United States. His future in the country now lies in the hands of the Omaha immigration court, which during a recent 9-month period granted only 3 percent of applicants asylum鈥攖he lowest approval rate in the country.
鈥淚t鈥檚 not a happy statistic,鈥 for asylum seekers like Marco, said Kevin Ruser, who heads the immigration clinic at the Nebraska College of Law.听
Photo by Rebecca S. Gratz for the Flatwater Free Press
By second period, Marco stands before his U.S. government class and recites a presentation in English about Barack Obama, hands shoved into his jacket pockets. His teacher, Mrs. Blaser, helps him along as he stumbles on tricky-to-pronounce words, like 鈥渟ubsequently鈥 or 鈥渇inance regulation.鈥
He walks hallways papered with posters celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. Fliers pasted on the walls announce the theater department鈥檚 bilingual play and one-on-one appointments offered by Ruser鈥檚 immigration law students. Decades-old photos of entirely white football teams hang over display cases of trophies, a reminder of how things have changed.听
Marco鈥檚 third-period teacher, Mrs. Lickai, spends the class corralling missing assignments before they start their next unit on a novel about the Wild West.
Marco, like many of the school鈥檚 seniors, is on a half-day schedule, which lets seniors go to their core classes and still have time to work.听
He鈥檚 been working full-time for two years鈥攋uggling these things feels normal now. But he wishes he could be on the soccer team. Or that he could play saxophone in the band.
Last year, his class went on a college visit to Wayne State. In a building lobby, there was a grand piano. Marco sat down and started playing a flowing ballad from memory.
Clarissa Eloge, his teacher, watched, amazed.听
Courtesy photo
She had Marco in two back-to-back classes that year. Sometimes he鈥檇 fall asleep, exhausted by his night of work. She鈥檇 let him nap鈥擬arco is a smart kid, and he always caught up easily.听
But she had no idea he plays piano. Or that he plays five other instruments鈥攕axophone, trumpet, drums, bass guitar, and the g眉ira, a percussion instrument used in merengue. Or that in his brief moments of free time between sleep, work, and homework, he practices piano in the bedroom shared with his nephew.听
That on weekends when he鈥檚 not working, he dons a collared shirt and suit jacket and plays piano in his Pentecostal church鈥檚 merengue band.听
When Marco finished playing the ballad that day at Wayne State, Eloge started to ask him about all this, and he started to answer.听
My dream, he told her, is to share what I love with other people.听
My dream is to be a music teacher at a school like Schuyler.听
**
Photo by Rebecca S. Gratz for the Flatwater Free Press
Marco stands before his last class of the day, giving a presentation on global warming. Behind him, the Mexican and Guatemalan flags hang above the chalkboard.听
His public speaking class of Spanish speakers practices English in speeches and writes thank you cards to teachers as Thanksgiving approaches.听
His teacher in this class, Flores, noticed him when he first arrived at school in the fall of 2022.
He was in a foreign place, surrounded by strangers and an unfamiliar language.
She helped him feel comfortable. She also helped him, this year, get his second job at Panda Express. She works there, too, as a manager on the weekends.听
As he goes through his slides, she helps him along with hard-to-pronounce words.听
鈥淭he use of…pesticides?鈥 he says, looking in her direction. She nods at him as the word comes out right. 鈥…are destroying our environment,鈥 he finishes.听
鈥淎 week late,鈥 she says. 鈥淏ut you did it.鈥
Flores sees herself in students like Marco. Sixteen years ago, she was Marco.听
Flores came to Schuyler alone as a 19-year-old, at a time when the school was still adjusting to an influx of immigrant students.听
She spent her nights working in factories like Tyson and Camaco. After eight years, she saved enough money to go to college. She worked as a teacher aide in Columbus, the first time she realized just how many students were working late-night shifts in factories.听
Flores has taught in Schuyler for four years. She knows these students鈥 reality.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e going to be in pain. Your hands are going to hurt. Your feet are going to hurt. Your back is going to be killing you the next day. And teachers don鈥檛 know that,鈥 she said.听
Photo by Rebecca S. Gratz for the Flatwater Free Press
New students arrive every month, Eloge said. Some will leave at the end of the year, finding a job in a faraway city, or moving 20 minutes away to Columbus where housing is easier to find, or returning to their home country because life in Nebraska wasn鈥檛 what they imagined.听
Her goal is to help students feel comfortable speaking English by the time they graduate, but four years isn鈥檛 enough time to get someone fully proficient, she said.听
In the days after the election, a student told Flores he was giving up on everything. With Donald Trump promising to send people like him away, he said, what鈥檚 the point of trying?听
鈥淲e鈥檙e going to be deported,鈥 he told her.听
Teachers, administrations, and advocacy groups are already starting to plan for this potential reality. What happens if there鈥檚 an ICE raid? What鈥檚 the plan if one day, students return home from school and their parents are gone?
Flores tries to keep kids like Marco focused on the future. Graduate, she says. Go to college. Get off the overnight shift.听
鈥淚 keep telling them, guys, you don鈥檛 want to do this for the rest of your life.鈥澨
**
Photo by Rebecca S. Gratz for the Flatwater Free Press
The last bell of Marco鈥檚 day rings鈥攈e has five hours between school and his next shift at Panda Express.听
He will sleep for as many of those five hours as he can. No time for homework.听
He will awaken, drive back to Columbus, spend another six hours cooking at Panda.听
He鈥檒l clock out, change his work uniform in his car, drive two miles toward his graveyard shift.听
In the gravel Camaco parking lot, he grabs his steel-toed boots and long-sleeved shirt, his ear plugs to protect his hearing, and the goggles to shield his eyes in the factory.听
It鈥檚 nearly 11 p.m. now. The start of another night standing at a conveyor belt, inspecting the thousand pieces of metal that will become car seats.听
All over Schuyler and Columbus and Madison, his classmates are heading to their jobs at Cargill, Camaco, Tyson.听
In the morning, they鈥檒l go back to school.
Miles to Go: Stories of Us at 250
- Foreword: America, A Work in Progress
- The Semiquin
- The Afterlife of Amache
- Dispatch: Denver, Colorado
- Marco鈥檚 Journey
- Making an Impact
- Dispatch: Chicago, Illinois
- If You Build It, Will They Come?
- Echoes of the Past
- More than Neighbors
- Dispatch: Washington, DC
- The 鈥淣ew Georgia鈥
- Hurricane Katrina鈥檚 Lessons
- Dispatch: New Orleans, Louisiana