When Raegan Kline and Alfredo Linares married last summer, their dream felt straightforward and simple: start a Japanese barbecue pop-up restaurant in Los Angeles and live happily ever after.
But all of that changed in the fall when President Donald Trump, who had promised mass deportations on the campaign trail, won reelection.
Linares, who had worked his way up in fine dining to become a cook in a Michelin Star restaurant, arrived in the US as a teenager at 19 with his family and has lived here illegally ever since. Kline, a US citizen, was stricken with worry that at any moment, her husband could be arrested and deported.
“I really didn’t feel safe,” Kline said. “Every morning I would wake up saying, ‘If we don’t go and something happens to him, I’ll never be able to forgive myself.’ “
In March, the couple moved from Culver City to Linare’s birth country of Mexico in hopes of improving their chances of building a future together.
“I lived in the shadows for 20 years,” Linares said. “I’m 38 years old, so I don’t think I have 10 more years of living in the shadows when I’m trying to build a business and grow as a family, as an entrepreneur.”
Going into debt to move to Mexico
The couple received around $10,000 in cash from their parents as a wedding gift. They had originally hoped to use the money to hire a lawyer to help Linares gain citizenship, but they wrestled with the best way to use the money to secure a future together.
“Do we really go ahead and gamble and trust this administration with this $10,000 that our parents gave us for our wedding gifts, or do we use that $10,000 to move to Mexico?” Kline said of their dilemma.
But even the wedding gift wasn’t enough to help them break even and start fresh in Mexico. The pair took on debt to start their Japanese barbecue business last spring. While they tried to get it off the ground, their bills ballooned to over $20,000. They raised over $4,000 online through GoFundMe to help them with their relocation.
Since the move, they’ve attempted to find jobs in hospitality, but because Linares doesn’t have an identification card and Kline doesn’t have work authorization as a temporary resident, it’s been difficult to pay the bills.
“We’re not earning an income,” Kline said. “We have all of that stress and try to keep our credit card in a reasonable place and keep ourselves on a budget.”
Adjusting to life in a new country
The biggest hurdle for them has been navigating the deluge of paperwork and bureaucracy in a new country.
“I’m very Americanized,” Linares said. “Yes, I’m Mexican, but I haven’t been here for 20 years. It’s totally different from the Mexico I left.”
From needing a physical copy of a birth certificate to struggling to establish Linares’ permanent residence, it’s been hard for him to get an ID card when they were first living in Airbnbs in Mexico City.
“I need my ID, but I cannot have an ID because I don’t have a home address. And I can’t get a home address because I don’t have a job, because I don’t have an ID,” Linares said of the frustrating situation.
Now they are renting an apartment in Puerto Vallarta in the state of Jalisco, where they’ve been finally settling in over the past three weeks.
“I feel like myself a little bit more,” Kline said of the stability. “I’m realizing that this is where we live, this is our home. We’re not on vacation.”
Kline is now able to see past the trials of the past few months and look toward the future with more hope. They’ve since brought down their rescue dog Dolly Love from Los Angeles to live with them in Mexico.
“I do believe we made the right choice,” Kline said. “I do believe that there’s opportunity here. I do believe in my husband and his talents and his skills.”
The move to Mexico has tested their relationship and challenged them in many different ways, but Linares said the core of their bond hasn’t been shaken.
They keep a routine of checking in with each other over coffee every morning. “She makes things easier, and it’s because of the communication that we have,” Linares said of his wife.
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