Some nights, Alejandra Muñoz wakes with the distinct feeling that she’s not an adult in Long Beach, Calif. She’s a teen in Oakland, listening to her brother bang around the kitchen. It usually takes her a minute to remember that Donovan is not around anymore. He hasn’t died. He has been deported. “Sometimes it’s worse than a death; I’ve had family members pass away, and you heal,” said Muñoz, whose birth father died when she was 2. With deportation, she said, “nothing I do will bring my family back together. It’s like an incomplete puzzle, and I can’t find the last few pieces.”
