Daughter of deported Mexicans must decide: Life with her parents or life in America

Lourdes “Lulu” Quintana-Salazar was born and raised in Michigan. Now she has to decide whether to live with her deported parents in Mexico or attend a better school in Michigan, where she feels at home. There are thousands of kids like her in Mexico — U.S. citizen children of undocumented parents who have been deported. And the numbers are expected to spike under the Trump administration.

She wakes in the top bunk, and there they are: McKenna, Izzy, Sylvia, Molly and other friends from “over there,” in Michigan, smiling down on her from photos clipped to a string of tiny white lights on the wall. Happy lights, happy memories. From before she had to leave America.

She brushes her long, brown hair and pulls on her school uniform: blue sweater and skirt, white knee socks. Another day of struggling, in a classroom packed with more than 60 kids, to study logic and algebra in Spanish. It’s her parents’ language, but it’s not hers. Neither is this country.

And now, at 16, Lulu has to choose.

Here: Her mother and father, both deported, and her little brother, Bryan. They can’t believe Lulu would leave, and she can’t believe she’s considering it.

“They are my whole life,” she says.

There: Ann Arbor, where she was born, the only home she’s ever known. Her top-notch high school, with small classes, in English, and kids who pay attention. Then, she hopes, the University of Michigan and medical school.

She could live with her uncle, a U.S. citizen, and slip right back into her old life of frozen yogurt, the YMCA, Panera, the mall. Where she felt safe. Welcome.

Lourdes “Lulu” Quintana-Salazar’s U.S. passport gives her the option, and the burden, of deciding between two lives.

There are thousands of kids like her in Mexico — U.S. citizen children of undocumented parents who have been deported, who are struggling to adapt to a country they don’t quite know, a language they don’t quite speak and people who often regard them as oddities.

To read full story click: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/04/05/feature/for-an-american-teen-whose-parents-were-deported-to-mexico-an-agonizing-choice/?utm_term=.c3db69e9aa22