Russell Contreras

The parents would give the same talk that black men and black women give their black children about the talk about cops.

We would have the talk about the border patrol.

This is what you expect.

If they accuse you of not being from the United States, this is what you would do.

But those are conversations that we've had for years on how to deal with the Border Patrol, regardless of who's the agent.

That's our reality.

So when these agents go into the United States, into the interior as part of some new immigration enforcement, it's jarring that people don't they don't know what we had to go through.

Now these people are at your front door.

interacting adversely with American citizens who are not Latino.

Now they're concerned.

Now we're having a different discussions like, oh, I didn't know this was happening there.

As long as those happened far away in these rural areas, it was really not my concern.

Now it's at my front door.

Wait a minute.

Now I got to pay attention.

And I think that that goes into the lack of history that people

They don't have a concept of what goes on in Mexican-American communities outside of big cities, in rural areas, even all the way to El Paso.

They only talk about it in terms of immigration and not discrimination, and those are very different.

Good to be with you.