Cristela Alonso

Yes.

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.

And that is something really heavy to deal with.

But at the same time, it became kind of your normal thing, your normal way of life that you were so used to it that, again, you didn't realize how big it was until later, until you got older.