I have lived in the US for 66 years — never have I seen freedoms being eroded in the way they are now. We need to stay very firm and protect those freedoms.
I know people who are in the country legally and have been taken away. One was the girlfriend of our guitar technician. She had been in the US for 25 years, came in with a visa, paid taxes. In her last appointment at immigration, she got carried away and has been at a detention centre for five months. Why? It’s inhumane, it’s scary and not necessary. We don’t have much power other than letting people know that that’s not what the US stands for.
I carry my passport card around just in case, because who knows what can happen. I was born in Cuba — that’s why we’re so wary of what’s happening, because this is the way things happened there. The US Supreme Court ruled that you can be stopped and questioned if you’re speaking Spanish or you have darker skin. [Restrictions that had barred agents from making stops without “reasonable suspicion” were lifted in Los Angeles in September.] It’s tough. When we’re out with the family, it’s very natural to speak Spanish. It’s weird that, all of a sudden, you’d have to fear that.
