Grandmother of Girl Who Covered Edward Sharpe's ‘Home’ Likely to Be Deported
On New Year’s Eve 2010, Jorge Narvaez posted a video on YouTube of him and his daughter singing a cover of Edward Sharpe’s song “Home.” The video of the pair singing a song about feeling at “home wherever I’m with you” saw millions of views within a week of being published and today, four years later, has more than 27 million views.
Narvaez and his daughter Alexa went on to appear on “Ellen,” “America’s Got Talent,” and even starred in a Hyundai commercial. But he couldn’t share that success with his mother in person: She was across the border in Mexico, unable to come back to San Diego where she raised her family.
Esther Alvarado raised Narvaez in California. Narvaez says his mother entered the U.S. in 1987 without authorization to meet the rest of the family in San Diego.
“She crossed the border by walking over mountains, she almost lost her life trying to get to us,” Narvaez told Fusion.
Last month, Narvaez posted a second version of the “Home” video on YouTube with a very different purpose — to keep his mother in the United States.
“My mother Esther Alvarado, is currently detained with the 150 families trying to come home,” Narvaez wrote in the YouTube video’s description.
In March, Narvaez’s mother was one of 78 adult individuals who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to turn themselves over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and seek asylum from the countries where they were born.
In 2007, at the advice of a legal adviser she traveled to the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez for an immigration interview that she understood would help her legalize her status in the United States.
“That person made the biggest mistake,” Narvaez said. “He didn’t know the laws as well as he should have. We were naive and we thought it was right thing to do.”