July 9, 2019 by admin

A “Jewish Texican” Teen at the Border

If you don’t go to the respite center, you will never see the people who are crossing the border. I guess I was the most touched by the kids who were there who are my age. Because once you turn 18, you’re, like, an adult, and so you have to have one of those ankle monitors on. And this girl had just showered and she put on her new clothes, and she was like, “Oh, I need a pair of scissors,” in Spanish. And I had handed them to her and I was like, what could she possibly need scissors for? And she had to cut her pants because she couldn’t get it over the ankle monitor. And she’s, like, my age. Imagine what she’s gone through just to get here. And now she can’t just be normal.

EMILY GURWITZ, 18, in “The ‘Valley Girls’ of the Rio Grande,” The New York Times, May 3, 2019.

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