“After we got married, we inquired with a couple of lawyers and never got anywhere. And, you know, we were OK,” she said.
The couple plowed themselves into work and weren’t fearful — until Trump took office.
“I worried about him every time he left the house. He worked all over the New York area and New Jersey and Pennsylvania,” Muñoz said about his construction work. “We were always hearing stories about ‘Oh, they took so and so, they took so and so.’ I was always worried, worried, worried.”
It’s a stark change for Muñoz, who is in her 50s and a mother of four adult children still in the U.S.
“I was around people constantly. I had regular clientele where I worked. So I was always socializing. On my days off, I was constantly going,” she said. “Now I feel like I have no sense of purpose.”
Alfredo is hopeful about their new life in Mexico. “It was like a month that I felt a little strange, a little different,” he said in Spanish. “But now, it seems that we’re both going to fit in here.”
The Muñozes aren’t alone in their move.
North of Puebla, in Mexico City, Haley Pulver, 34, is navigating a similar journey.
She moved here from Connecticut in August with her partner of three years, Oscar Enríquez.
The pair met on the dating app Tinder and started out as friends. Enríquez said he remembers being lonely, with no friends outside of his welding work, and how he felt he could be fully himself when he was with her.
It was a while before she knew he was living in the U.S. undocumented. He told her that he had unknowingly overstayed a visa in 2019, she said. Then, two months later, he was detained for about a week before he was released. He had never been in jail before, “so it was shocking,” he said of being taken away in chains.
Pulver said a judge issued an order for his removal last year.
“I don’t remember the specific conversation that we had, but he brought it up. And then, of course, I had to get the info. So I asked 500 questions,” she said.