Summary
Jocelynn Rojo Carranza, an 11-year-old girl from Gainesville, Texas, died by suicide after enduring months of bullying over her family’s immigration status.
Classmates allegedly mocked her and threatened to report her family to ICE. The school was aware of the bullying but failed to notify Carranza’s family.
Her mother, Marbella Carranza, only learned of the harassment after her daughter’s death and is now working with investigators and the school to understand what happened and why she was not notified.
Not trying to deny your experience or anything like that, but a lot of people feel that way, especially around that age, are you sure it was because of your lack of citizenship? I know I have always felt like that, and I was born in Boston, Mayflower descendant too…
Not the point, I know.
you’re correct it’s not a unique experience to feel isolated from the rest of your peers. i feel like it’s an experience that might actually be increasing. i think social media ironically adds to this in the youth. many biracial people also experience something like this (ie, too white for the blacks, too black for the whites)
when i got here initially i moved to a place where nobody spoke my native language. so when i went to school, i would get put in a class all by myself with a nice lady who would hold flash cards with pictures on them. she would show me a card, it would say something like “cat” or “ball” and then she would repeat them over and over.
so the first year or so of primary school I was alone in a room because I didn’t speak english yet. really what eventually taught me english was cable TV
another element in the experience is being afraid of authority. the police were dangerous because at any moment if they caught us the family could get separated and we could get deported. one time my parents were cleaning an office late at night (they worked in cleaning when they first arrived in US) and they brought me with.
i didn’t understand what a fire alarm was so i pulled it. my parents, scared that the authorities would arrive and see a young child, took me and put me in the backseat of the car where people’s feet usually go and they put a blanket on me. they told me to be very quiet and not make a sound otherwise we could all be deported. so i hid in that car for an hour or so until the emergency services left
i share these things not to say i had a hard life or anything like that. I think I had a good upbringing. and I understand many Americans have had much worse experiences and also feel alienated as well.
But I share these things just because the story in the OP touched me because I was that 11 year old child once. It’s a life and a set of experiences a lot of Americans don’t really think about very much. Or at least historically has been more or less ignored.
Nowadays illegals have attention but unfortunately an overwhelmingly peaceful people become “rapists and murderers”. if you look up statistics, illegals are 2-4x less likely to commit crime than native born americans (if you get any charge at all, you can get deported… even if you get acquitted or the charges dropped!). so naturally they tend to be more careful breaking laws