"This is America" is the story of a family torn apart by deportation.
Jose is a gifted undocumented student attending college in Austin on a full academic scholarship. He is a junior pre-law student who excels in all his classes. He is originally from Houston. He has a younger brother and was raised solely by his mother. While away at college, a raid is conducted by ICE on his mother’s workplace and she is deported. Jose leaves school and for the next few days he is in limbo back in Houston, unsure whether his little brother and him should pack up and join their mother in Mexico.
One of the major themes in the work is the fear and paranoia of the community after they are hit with two major raids. Mothers afraid to allow their children to play outside or even go to school, workers afraid to go to work in fear of continued raids. The major sub-plot in the film is Jose’s relationship with Celeste (another gifted student he runs into at college who is also from his neighborhood). They fall in love but the relationship is complicated by Celeste’s overprotective, violent cousin Gustavo.
