Day 12

The end of another day and we keep getting closer and closer to the end. Today was great because we went to the 10th Annual Border Issues Fair. We had to wake up early in order to get there on time, but man was it worth it! We got to hear multiple people speak. The first was Sandra Lopez, a young woman who was raised in Tucson since she was two weeks old. When she was 19, one of her friends asked her to deliver a package for her and she did it. However, what she didn't know was that the package was full of marijuana. What happened then was that she was deported, even though her step-father was a U.S. citizen. She was living on the streets of Nogales for about a week, until one day a man approached her with a knife and she ran through the lines of traffic at the border to one of the U.S. authorities. He took her to a holding place for people who request asylum in the United States and told her to wait until someone came for her to ask some questions and fill out some paperwork. No one ever came and she was arrested for illegal re-entry into the United States. She had to serve time in federal prison and lost two years of her life. She is now allowed to remain in the country, but she could be deported at any moment. Her lawyer is working on getting her a better deal, but for now she is just grateful to be back in the U.S. She went through all of this, even though she had been living in the United States her whole life.

 We also hear from James Duff Lyall, who is a Border Litigation Staff Attorney in Tucson. He was telling us about the corruption with the Border Patrol and he told us a story of this one woman, a U.S. citizen, who was driving home with her two kids when she got pulled over. The officer came up to the window and told her to get out of the car. The woman wanted to know why, because all they need to know is if she is a U.S. citizen, but the officer just told her again to get out of the car. Again, the woman asked why and the officer said that if she didn't take off her seatbelt and get out of the car that he would take his knife and cut off her seatbelt and drag her out. Then he turned to his partner and asked him to get the taser because she was being "difficult." Obviously the woman just got out of the car, they questioned her for 45 minutes, and then let her go. She kept driving, and then discovered that one of her tires had been slashed! It was completely ridiculous. Our last speaker of the day was Christian Ramirez, Director of Human Rights Programs, Alliance San Diego, and Southern Border Communities Coalition. Each of the speakers were incredible and enlightened us even more about the issues on the border.

Along with all of the speakers, we also got to speak with people from different Humanitarian groups. I got to speak with another person from the Green Valley Samaritans and actually Shura, who we met a couple of days ago, was there also! Everyone who came and spoke to us kept saying how happy they were that so many young people were interested in the immigration problem between the U.S. and Mexico. 

After the Border Issues Fair, we had the rest of the day free. The first thing we did was go to a park and have a kind of picnic for lunch! It was a beautiful day out and we had a lot of great food! After lunch we all divided into doing different things. Ana Sofia, Alessandro and I all went to 4th Avenue to check out all of the stores. We found a lot of really cool stuff and I bought a really awesome new pair of pants! All of  the stores were very bohemian in style. After shopping, everyone went out to dinner and a couple of us stayed at Borderlinks and just relaxed. It was a great day to recover from all the busy days we've had so far! Tomorrow we get to sleep in, which I am more than excited about. We also get to have dinner with Mike Wilson, who was featured in one of the documentaries we watched before we came here! It should be another great day!