- Joined
- Dec 3, 2009
- Messages
- 52,009
- Reaction score
- 33,943
- Location
- The Golden State
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
[FONT="]On June 9, 2009, just after 2 a.m., Laura S. left the restaurant where she waitressed, in Pharr, Texas, and drove off in her white Chevy. She was in an unusually hopeful mood. Her twenty-third birthday was nine days away, and she and her nineteen-year-old cousin, Elizabeth, had been discussing party plans at the restaurant. They’d decided to have coolers of beer, a professional d.j., and dancing after Laura put her three sons to bed. Now they were heading home, and giving two of Laura’s friends a ride, with a quick detour for hamburgers. Elizabeth said that, as they neared the highway, a cop flashed his lights at them. The officer, Nazario Solis III, claimed that Laura had been driving between lanes and asked to see her license and proof of insurance.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Laura had neither. She’d lived in the United States undocumented her whole adult life.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Do you have your residence card?” Solis asked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“No,” Laura said, glancing anxiously at her cousin and her friends. Solis questioned them, too. Only Elizabeth had a visa, which she fished out of her purse. Solis directed the others to get out of the car. “I’m calling Border Patrol,” he said—an unusual move, at the time, for a small-town cop in South Texas.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Laura panicked. At five feet two inches and barely a hundred pounds, she looked younger than her age. She often wore tube tops and short shorts, and styled her hair in a girlish bob. Her affect was “attached to childhood,” her older brother told me; she collected porcelain dolls, and loved Japanese anime and Saturday-morning cartoons. Laura’s friends saw her trembling. Like her, they had kids who were U.S. citizens and steady jobs they didn’t want to lose, but they knew that Laura’s fear was distinct. She had an ex-husband across the border, in Reynosa, Mexico, who had promised to kill her if she returned.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I can’t be sent back to Mexico,” Laura told Solis, beginning to cry. “I have a protection order against my ex—please, just let me call my mom and she’ll bring you the paperwork.”[/FONT]
To make a long story short, no one called her mom, she was deported without a hearing, and her ex tortured and killed her.
And, she's not alone.
Read more here
Some of them are, I assume, good people. Yes, and some of those good people are fleeing bad people.