Natasha seeks help at USCIS

Natasha Kingsley’s visit to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office is a last attempt to avert her family’s departure from the United States, scheduled for that night. The agency cannot undo the legal process, but an unexpected encounter with Lester Barnes gives her a name to pursue: attorney Jeremy Fitzgerald. The visit therefore ends neither in a solution nor in simple defeat. It converts Natasha’s desperation into one more, improbable course of action.

The Last Chance

Natasha leaves for the downtown Manhattan office knowing that her family is undocumented and facing removal that evening. Her mother’s response is subdued: she kisses her teeth and turns away. Natasha reminds herself that her mother’s frustration is not directed at her, a small effort to separate a family’s shared crisis from personal blame. She has no faith in fate, but desperation makes the trip feel like a final appeal to anyone—or anything—that might help.

She arrives late. The receptionist tells her to call the main USCIS line and make another appointment, an instruction that is useless on the day her family is supposed to leave. Natasha explains that she needs help and mentions Irene, the security guard, but the receptionist dismisses her. When Natasha insists that the receptionist call Karen Whitney, her voice grows loud enough to draw stares from the other applicants. The scene makes the stakes legible across language barriers: as Natasha observes, desperation translates into every language.

Before a security guard can reach her, a very tall, thin man with dark brown skin opens the door to the meeting rooms and tells the receptionist, “It’s all right, Mary. I’ll take her.” He leads Natasha down the hall to Karen Whitney’s office, then returns holding her red file. The unexpected opening does not mean the institution has accepted her case; it only gets her past the waiting room and into a conversation with Barnes.

A File and a Family’s Case

Barnes stops Natasha from beginning her explanation. “Everything I need to know is in this file,” he says, telling her to stay quiet while he reads. The precision of his office contrasts with the human burden of the records: silver-colored desk accessories match one another, and color-coded files fill the cabinet behind him. Natasha imagines her own folder as “Rejection Red.” She takes a business card from the holder on his desk and slips it into her pocket, a small act of initiative in a room where the file seems to speak for her.

When Natasha asks whether she really has to leave, Barnes points to her father’s DUI. She objects, “Is his problem. Why do I have to pay for his mistake?” The question names the family’s chain of cause and consequence: her father’s arrest led authorities to discover the family’s immigration status, and the resulting process now threatens the only home Natasha knows. Barnes answers that she is still in the country illegally, but his voice has softened. The law’s classification remains in force even as the personal cost becomes harder to ignore.

Natasha explains what departure would mean in concrete terms. She has lived in the United States since she was eight, has no close knowledge of family in Jamaica, and feels no connection to the accent she expects others there to hear. Her senior year, prom, graduation, and friends are not incidental losses; they are the ordinary future she wants to have. She has begun preparing an application to Brooklyn College. Her mother saved for two years to travel to Florida and buy a social security card bearing stolen numbers, rather than bogus ones that would fail background checks. The card could allow Natasha to seek financial aid, and, with a scholarship, perhaps afford SUNY Binghamton or another in-state school. These plans show how a child’s educational future has been built around precarious access to documents and institutions.

From USCIS to Fitzgerald

Barnes cannot give Natasha the relief she came seeking. Her distress breaks through during their conversation; afterward, she understands the encounter as a chain of contingencies. Had she not been late, she would not have met Barnes; had he not said Irie, she would not have had her meltdown; and without that outburst she would not have left with a lawyer’s name. Barnes calls Jeremy Fitzgerald a long shot and ushers her out without letting her make an appointment from his phone. Natasha nevertheless keeps the note and concludes that when the improbable chance is the only one left, it has to be taken.

The referral leads to a separate appointment with Fitzgerald, but that visit is threatened when she learns he has been hit by a car and cannot be there. She fills out the office’s forms anyway. One asks whether she is a communist, criminal, or terrorist and whether she would take up arms to defend the United States; although she says she would not, she checks yes. Another requests an account of the removal process, while the client questionnaire asks for her history in the country. Fitzgerald’s paralegal tells her to explain what America means to her, why she wants to stay, and how she would contribute to the country. Natasha is thus asked to translate a lived attachment into evidence that might make her human to a legal case.

When she eventually recounts the case to Fitzgerald, the procedural history clarifies why the USCIS visit could not itself change the outcome. After her father’s arrest, the family received a Notice to Appear from the Department of Homeland Security. At an earlier hearing, a judge offered voluntary removal or an application for cancellation of removal. Her father chose to contest the case; the family then relied on Peter’s U.S. citizenship, hoping it would establish the extreme hardship required for cancellation. Their inexpensive lawyer advised against appealing after the judge denied the case and recommended voluntary departure as a way to preserve some hope of returning. Fitzgerald explains that USCIS was not the agency with jurisdiction over this problem. The office Natasha had approached in desperation could not reverse a court’s decision.

What the Visit Reveals

The attempt exposes the gap between legal responsibility and family consequence. Natasha sees her father’s DUI as his mistake, but the discovery of the family’s undocumented status makes every family member answer to the resulting process. Peter’s citizenship once seemed like a possible safeguard, yet the family learned that the harm of uprooting him did not meet the legal threshold for extreme hardship. Natasha’s own long residence, school plans, and friendships are intensely consequential to her, but they do not automatically become grounds to remain.

The forms also make belonging a matter of performance: Natasha must describe America’s meaning and her future contribution even as the removal process treats her presence as unlawful. Her application is not simply an argument about where she was born or where she might go; it is an attempt to make a life assembled through school, family, and daily routine count as more than a file. Barnes offers no reversal, and Fitzgerald ultimately cannot stop her deportation. Yet the visit matters because it stages Natasha’s refusal to accept that a closed appointment line is the same as having no options. Her hope is not confidence in fate. It is the decision to pursue the remaining long shot.