Cristela Alonso

And then once you realize that it was happening, I personally started remembering the immigration sweeps that happened in the 80s in my hometown, where a lot of times immigrants

You would not see your friends anymore because their parents had been deported.

Their immigration raid came and like just deported people at a factory, at a company, what have you.

Back then, you didn't need a passport.

You needed a birth certificate.

Passports kind of became a required thing later on when I became kind of, I want to say around a preteen teenager.

You could just pass back and forth as long as you had the birth certificate.

A lot of times when you're a child,

You're crossing the border and the Border Patrol agents want to ask you all of these questions to make sure that you are who you are, that you're not someone from Mexico that they're trying to bring in, you know, quote unquote, illegally.

So they ask you for your name.

They ask you how old you are.

And then they kind of go off of your answers and decide, what more am I going to ask her?

So as a little kid, it's what's your favorite school subject?

Who's the name of your favorite teacher?

What's the name of your elementary school?

And it's all of these questions.

And I remember going through the border one time with a cousin of mine who's older than me, and he was a little bit on the spectrum.

And had trouble answering a couple of questions.

And they detained him.

And we were held over for a long time.