‘This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to speak to someone with no filter’

As I stood by the fence that divides the United States with Mexico, the words of a judge who was speaking to a detainee in court kept on ringing in my mind.

The judge said, “I know why you’ve come into the United States, but you must ignore that it is on the other side of a fence – you need to pretend it’s not there.”

As I observed my surroundings, I found it hard to be able to ignore the dream that immigrants would see if they wished to enter the United States.

This fence extends for miles, where it divides the US from towns like Juarez, Mexico-which was once known as the murder capital world by CNN with 8.5 killings per day in 2010.

By point of comparison, BBC reports that in 2010, there were five murders in El Paso, Texas.

In Juarez, there were 3,075 murders.

Despite that, every day there are approximately 4.2 million pedestrians who use the three bridges that connect Mexico with the United States. Some come to work here, some come to buy commodities – and then there are children who cross with a student visa to receive an education in the United States, according to BBC.

I took a moment to picture unaccompanied minors crossing cities that are not safe like Juarez – or even the amount of walking they have to accomplish to reach to their school. It’s reminiscent of crossing a dream to a nightmare every day, and I was astonished with their level of sacrifice at a young age.

My visit to the US-Mexico border, was part of the Service Immersion trip that I was participating in for a week in El Paso, Texas by Temple University.

When we arrived at the border, we had a scheduled visit with two Border Control officers who were assigned to give us a tour. They had not yet arrived, so I began to walk towards the fence with a friend of mine and an elderly woman spotted us from the Mexican side. I knew this was a lifetime opportunity to speak to someone with no filter.

Of course, there was no privacy since the fence was heavily secured with cameras and you could hear the Border Control officers helicopters, roaming in the air in search of any activity. However, I was still glad to be able to be up close with someone who had the courage to come up to us without any worry.

When we asked why she was picking up trash, she said that she did it for a living to earn some cash. The way she looked at my friend and I spoke volumes. If her eyes could tell a story, it would say that she’s been through hell and has seen things that she should not have seen. If her eyes could tell a story, I could see the pain that she’s living by living nearby the border. I couldn’t but to think why a woman her age was picking up trash in this heat.

The moment that will always stay with me is when my friend swiftly gave her some cash. The woman’s face gleamed with content as she began to cry when my friend insisted she should take the money.

“Thank you so much, I know God put you in my life for a reason right now and bless you all,” said the elderly woman in Spanish.

I stood there frozen. I didn’t know what to do. Were we allowed to even give money to anyone from the other side? Were the border control officers who are watching us from their monitors going to sound an alarm and arrest us? I might have been a bit paranoid, but these are the things you think about when you’re being watched so heavily.

I didn’t know how to react by my friend’s act of kindness as I looked down at my phone, questioning if I should do the same. The only thing that I could say or do was to shout out that I would simply keep her in my prayers and the elderly woman quickly walked away.

My father would tell me the stories of how dangerous crossing the border was for him and how some of the people who traveled with him never made it out alive. It’s a wrong assumption that the people who cross this border should simply do it the legal way; but for Mexican citizens, it would take them years to receive a visa from the US.

There are children who are fleeing from countries like El Salvador or Honduras, where gangs are recruiting young boys, and if they refuse, they’re killed point blank. It’s not game for some of these kids, and they choose to make the voyage to the U.S. or be killed instead. It’s even harder when they can’t apply for an asylum visa because they don’t even have records from the police or their own government to back up their claim that they are in danger – thus creating the only option to illegally cross the border.

I remember walking by the fence and just admiring it. My fingers could go through the cross wires, and I was in Mexico for a little. But I couldn’t be my jolly self when I knew how much this fence is dividing the nation.

Recently a respected and well-known journalist from Univision, Maria Elena Salinas, was booed at her speech at California State University, Fullerton.  She received backlash from her decision to speak a couple of words in Spanish and a brief statement on the media being the blame for Trump’s rise.

As a Latina, once I heard about her reception at the university, I felt like I was being attacked. It was said that the audience yelled out “Go back to Mexico” to Salinas and it made me feel like I didn’t matter in the country.  Salinas was born in California, yet she was criticized for her courage to speak out about a candidate who has said far worse than that.

What happened with this Salinas and the aftermath of her speech is how I felt about my visit to the border. I felt divided with the response that Salinas received including my own work that I have done to advocate for Latinos. I was left questioning if my work was even worth the effort if we will never be fully accepted by the country.

I looked up at the sky and wondered why did we have to be treated this way? Why is there so much hate towards our language and our culture if we are simply here to better ourselves. We aren’t “stealing” jobs because we can’t even work those jobs that American citizens have because the legal status that it requires. Unless you want to be working low wage jobs like my father, who had to work in the burning heat of the New Jersey summer, for 25 years paving concrete, than hey-maybe we are stealing your hard labor.

I just stood there, in the burning heat, slowly losing my hope. But like the many Latinos that I have met at El Paso and even at home in New Jersey, I knew that my disappoint should not lead me to losing my faith in a change. My visit to the border was more than I thought it would be, and although it’s a scar for my family and I, it’s always the reminder that I needed to keep on talking about immigration.