Split in Two

Robert Rodriguez II

Instructor’s Introduction

In fall 2025, students in WR 120: Ethical Missteps in Public Health wrote about the medical siloing of populations inside labels such as Asian, Hispanic, and Muslim, which exist alongside white and Black, for purposes of capturing demographic health data. The problem should be obvious: color, geographic, linguistic, and religious features comprise inconsistent features by which to catalog not only groups, but individuals. Medicine aside, these are also the kinds of labels our political leaders have adopted to decide who is and is not truly American. In recent years, such reductive and arbitrary labels have served as the rationale for snatching persons off the street, confining them in ICE facilities, and deporting them, often without due process or alerting of family members. In his last paper from WR 120, which is always a personal rather than academic essay about some facet of identity, Robert recounts the normal and often joyful ritual of departing for college alongside the abnormal terror of parents who worry that their child may be targeted by ICE. The irony of studying racism while fearing one may be its target is the reality for too many students at Boston University and around the country. Robert’s account reminds us that campuses should be places that cultivate critical thinking not solely as academic but as civic duty, so that students can learn and thrive without fear.

Melanie Smith

From the Writer

During my first semester at Boston University, I kept finding myself pulled back home to Houston. News about immigration enforcement and the conversations that followed in my family group chats made it difficult to fully separate my life on campus from what my family was experiencing.

That tension became the starting point for this essay. I began thinking more about the small ways fear shows up in everyday life, not just in headlines, but in routines, spaces, and relationships. Through memory and personal experience, I wanted to understand what it means to feel connected to a place that is changing without you. Writing this piece allowed me to explore how identity, belonging, and family remain intertwined even when physical space separates them.

Split in Two

Back home in Houston, news of ICE raids spreads through my family group chats and social media feeds, and each update follows me like a shadow as I move through my day at Boston University. I sit in the quiet corners of Mugar Library, watching students flip note cards, annotate readings, and sip coffee without urgency, but my mind drifts thousands of miles south. My mom keeps the curtains half closed even though she has always loved the way sunlight fills a room. My dad checks the driveway before taking out the trash, turning his head slowly left, then right, as if the night itself might be watching him. My younger cousins stay inside on afternoons that once pulled us outdoors with the promise of heat, laughter, and the sound of neighbors calling each other by name. The neighborhood that shaped me, the one I remember as loud and warm and full of life, now feels tense in ways I can only imagine through the screens of my phone. No matter how many readings I annotate or problem sets I finish, I cannot shake the tension of living in a version of home stuck between memory and fear. Professors talk about theory and lab results while I refresh my phone in case a call goes unanswered. I feel proud to be here, guilty to be safe, and somewhere in the middle I hear my mother’s voice telling me, Keep it with you.

Before my parents left me in my dorm room on move-in day, my mom pulled me aside and slipped my passport card into my hand. “Carry this everywhere, mijo,” she said. “It might save you.” Her fingers trembled just enough for me to notice. I tried to brush it off because I am white passing and most people wouldn’t assume I am Latino, but the way her eyes kept returning to the card made something settle deep in my chest, heavier than the luggage stacked around us. She repeated herself before walking out, tightening the strap of my backpack as if securing the card herself. Keep it with you, she said. Now it sits in the far slot of my wallet, tucked behind my student ID, and before I leave my room I check for the familiar pressure of the leather in my pocket. When I switch into Spanish on the phone, my voice drops without meaning to, like I am folding the language away so no one overhears. Even though my dad is a police officer, he pauses in the driveway after shifts, scanning the street like he is waiting for something to reveal itself. He tells me to stay safe in a voice that tries to sound steady, but the worry in it is unmistakable. Keep it with you, he reminds me, even when the words remain unspoken.

When I miss home, I think of Sunday mornings at the flea markets we used to visit, the ones that felt endless when I was a kid. The aisles were crowded with vendors selling anything and everything. Music played from speakers tied to tent poles. Kids raced past with bags of candied mango, their sneakers kicking up dust that floated like glitter in the sun. The smell of grilled corn drifted through the air. My dad haggled good-naturedly over fishing gear. My mom touched embroidered cloth like she was choosing something sacred. Some mornings, she would lift a bracelet to the light and ask me if I liked the color, and even if I did not, I nodded because her smile made the whole aisle seem brighter. Those markets were more than places to shop. They were the heartbeat of our weekends, the hum of community wrapped in color, sound, and warmth. But now my mom sends me photos from her phone, and the images feel distant and altered. Entire rows of stalls are empty. Vendors we knew by face are gone. The aisles I used to run through now look wide and bare. She says people stopped coming after too many stories about raids near public spaces, and vendors started whispering about cars idling too long in the parking lot. My mom doesn’t tell me this to scare me. She tells me because she knows I still picture the flea markets the way they used to be. “It is different now,” she says. And beneath her words, I hear the same quiet warning from move-in day: Keep it with you.

Here at BU, some days I walk through the dining halls and feel overwhelmed by how safe everything looks. People laugh loudly without any worry. They drop their backpacks on tables, call out to friends passing by, and move through the space without glancing over their shoulders. The noise fills every corner and for a moment I pause and let myself observe it all. The security guard by the doors nods at passing students, unaware of the contrast they represent. No one here imagines that a knock on the door might ripple through a household like an alarm. No one imagines their parents memorizing which cars belong on their street. Sometimes I try to match the energy around me, but other times the distance rises between us like an invisible wall. My world is split, one part in Boston where life moves freely, one part in Houston where fear has rearranged the everyday. I pass my hand by my pocket, not to touch the card directly but to feel the shape of my wallet pressing against the fabric. Keep it with you, the voice returns. And I do.

In the evenings, when the air outside reddens with sunset and students spill across Commonwealth Avenue, I often scroll through my family group chat and read the small updates they send. A photo of my sister doing homework at the kitchen table. A message from my aunt saying she heard sirens in the distance, and everyone froze until they faded. A short video of my cousin’s soccer ball rolling across the living room floor because she doesn’t play outside anymore. These updates arrive like glimpses into a life I left behind but still belong to. I haven’t been home since the day my parents dropped me off at BU, since my mom pressed the passport card into my palm, since my dad placed his hand on my shoulder and told me to make them proud. Home keeps changing without me. I learn about these changes through photos, videos, short calls, and moments they try to soften in their voices so I do not worry. But I do. The worry finds me in lecture halls, in dining halls, on late-night walks across campus when the sky feels too quiet. It settles in my chest and grows roots.

I think often about the sound of silence, not the peaceful kind, but the one that fills spaces where joy used to be. My mom once told me the flea market feels quieter because people do not linger the way they used to. They come, buy what they need, and leave. The music that once blasted from speakers now plays low or not at all. The vendors who remain keep their heads down and their voices subdued, as if loudness itself is something that draws attention. I imagine walking through those familiar aisles as they are now, though I have only seen them through her camera. I imagine the earth beneath my feet feeling unfamiliar because the joy that once echoed through those aisles has been replaced by something heavier. And yet, even from a distance, I feel the pull of those memories: my childhood running between stalls, my parents laughing together, the scent of food drifting through the morning heat. Those memories remind me of what home once was and what I want it to be again.

Robert Rodriguez II is a freshman studying Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University. A first-generation Mexican American student from Houston, Texas, his writing is shaped by his experiences navigating identity, distance, and belonging across different places. His work focuses on how immigration policy and social conditions are reflected in everyday life within immigrant communities. He would like to thank his WR 120 professor, Melanie Smith, for her guidance and support throughout the development of this essay.