Interview with My Friend Keren
- Carrie Stallings
- Jan 20
- 15 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
In recent posts about immigration, I've spoken mostly in broad, abstract terms. Today, I want to make it personal by sharing the story of my friend Keren (not her real name). The following is a summary of an interview I did with Keren in October 2025. She talks about why her family migrated to Texas and the experiences they've had here. Like every story, Keren's is complex. I hope you're able to catch a glimpse of her heart and humanity, as well as learn some real-life information about immigration.
The bulk of this post is AI summaries of our interview, with selected quotes from Keren. If you want to read the actual interview, click the timestamp above each summary to jump to the transcript. There's also a link to the transcript at the bottom of the post.
Links to Each Section of This Post
Keren’s family migrates to Midland, Texas, from Nueva Casa Grande, Chihuahua in 2012 (0:16-7:02)
Keren describes growing up in Nueva Casa Grande, Chihuahua, during a time when cartel violence intensified around 2012. Although her family was poor, their main reason for leaving Mexico was not economic hardship but religious persecution. Keren’s father was an evangelical pastor who preached openly in the streets and in jails, including to gang members and cartel affiliates. When some of those individuals left cartel life after converting to Christianity, cartel leaders blamed Keren’s father for “taking away their people.”
As a result, Keren’s father began receiving threatening phone calls, including false claims that his son had been kidnapped and later threats that Keren—who was only five years old at the time—would be next. Although the kidnapping was a bluff, the threats felt real: suspicious vehicles repeatedly passed their home, and the family locked themselves inside for days out of fear.
“I remember watching my dad. He would keep getting phone calls, and they were like, “Your daughter's next.”
Facing escalating danger, unemployment, extreme poverty, and threats against their children, Keren’s parents decided to flee Mexico to protect their family.
“Mind you, a lot of people that migrate over here, they don’t want to be over here. Their life is over there, everything is over there, their family’s over there, their parents are over there. But when something like that happens, which happens to a lot of people, because, you know, it's not our country anymore, all of these people took over, the corruption of politics took over, and they're just not free anymore, you know?
So when you get a phone call and they talk about, ‘I'm gonna kidnap your kids and I'm gonna sell them,’ and all of these crazy things you don't think, you know. You just want to get out of there.”
With no money, they received help from a church contact who enabled them to cross legally into the United States on a tourist visa, which they later overstayed. Keren explains that many families cross illegally because visas are prohibitively expensive when wages are as low as $20 a week.
She also reflects on her father’s earlier migrations to the U.S., sometimes undocumented, when poverty forced him to work temporarily and then return to Mexico. Keren emphasizes how often migrants are misunderstood, noting that most do not want to leave their home countries but are driven out by violence, corruption, lack of freedom, and fear for their families’ safety. She expresses gratitude for her current life and recognizes her privilege compared to others who are still struggling.
"Los Coyotes" aka cartels & traffickers (7:02-11:00)
Keren describes the extreme dangers migrants face when crossing the border with the help of coyotes, who are cartel-affiliated smugglers. Although coyotes present themselves as helpers, once migrants are under their control, they are vulnerable to severe abuse.
“So they're telling you like, ‘We're gonna help you cross over.’ But then once you're under their control, basically, they'll do whatever they want. It's not very certain, and it’s not very safe either. It's a lot of people's only option. Well, it is the only option, actually.”
Keren recounts her father witnessing horrific violence, including the sexual assault of a woman and her daughter, after which they were never allowed to cross and were effectively taken by the smugglers.
She explains that coyotes operate through an organized cartel system, charging fees to transport people but often exploiting them instead. During one of her father’s crossings, they stopped at a cartel safe house where he met a man who had been held there for about 20 years. The man had originally been smuggled as a teenager, but when his family could not fully pay the fee, the cartel kept him as unpaid labor, essentially enslaving him.
“‘They kept me.’” And he said, “‘I've been here for like 20 years.’ My dad prayed for him and he started crying. He said, ‘I wanted to have a family. I wanted to do all these things with my life.’”
Keren further explains that cartels exert control by seizing homes, extorting families with arbitrary “fines,” and punishing anyone who resists through kidnapping, disappearance, or murder to instill fear in the community.
“They can also take away people's houses and just be like, ‘Get out. This is my house now.’”
While she does not excuse their actions, Keren notes that many cartel members come from extreme poverty, lack parental care, and were raised in environments where violence and exploitation were normalized, contributing to the cycle of abuse and crime.
Keren’s father’s experience living and working in Midland (11:00-19:13)
When they left Mexico in 2012, Keren’s parents told her shortly after her sixth birthday that they were going to Texas for a vacation, but it was actually a permanent move.
“They just said we were going on vacation to Texas and we were gonna be back. But we never came back.”
Her family initially stayed on land owned by her dad’s friend, who lived in an RV in Midland, Texas. To survive, her father sold burritos on foot in the streets.
“My dad had this thing to carry the burritos. He was new here, you know, he didn't have a vehicle, he didn't know—he would get lost. And his boss would start yelling at him, like, ‘You're supposed to sell everywhere, not just in the same street every day!’ He would get lost, you know. Florida was the only street that he knew.”
Keren describes how being undocumented made her parents vulnerable to exploitation. A local pastor offered her dad work but treated him poorly—yelling at him, humiliating him in front of others, underpaying him, and sometimes refusing to pay him at all. Despite this mistreatment, the pastor eventually helped her father find a more stable job cleaning city pipes with acid, which her dad held for many years.
After that employer passed away, her father switched to another similar company, where he is now treated fairly and paid better. Keren emphasizes her father’s loyalty, strong work ethic, and tendency to see the good in people, even when they treat him badly.
“[This guy] had been telling him, ‘If you quit and you come with me, I’ll pay you more.’ And my dad's just really loyal. Like, wherever somebody gave him an opportunity, he stayed there. No matter what he's being paid because he just gets attached to people. So he didn't move jobs till he passed away, and then he started working with this person, and honestly, he's been a huge blessing to us.”
She ends by expressing pride and admiration for her father, whom she describes as an amazing person.
Keren and I discuss Mexican food for a solid 12 minutes (22:13-34:39)
Check out La Perla for incredible tortillas (corn and flour)!
Taxes and benefits for undocumented immigrants (34:39-39:34)
Keren addresses common misconceptions about undocumented immigrants, especially around taxes and public benefits. She explains that many undocumented workers do pay taxes using an ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number), largely because maintaining a tax history can help if they ever get the chance to legalize their status. However, she emphasizes that paying taxes does not qualify them for benefits like Social Security, meaning they contribute to the system without receiving many of its protections.
She also shares personal experiences with healthcare barriers. As a child, she became seriously ill but her family avoided seeking care due to high costs.
“So I remember like, being eight years old and getting a rare case of the flu, like a very weird flu, and it was just too expensive to go to the doctor. My fever was so high and I started to hallucinate, you know?”
Another time she was ill, they paid hundreds of dollars upfront and later receiving large medical bills. As an adult, she still struggles with health insurance access. During her pregnancy, she qualified for a limited state program (Healthy Texas) but did not receive prenatal care until four or five months into her pregnancy because of financial and access challenges.
Keren expresses frustration with political rhetoric that dehumanizes undocumented people and portrays them as a burden on the system. She pushes back against the idea that emergency medical care is unfairly provided to undocumented immigrants, arguing that denying life-saving care would be inhumane.
“I see comments that people post, or say out loud: ‘[The government shutdown] is the Democrats’ fault because they want to give insurance to illegals. And somebody argues with them, and they're like, ‘No, it is true, because think about it, like, if an illegal’—they don't even talk about us as people, you know—‘they get into a car crash and they need medical attention, they're not just gonna leave them. They're gonna take them to the hospital, and we pay for that.’
It's like, you want them to just leave them? It breaks my heart, because it's horrible.”
Overall, she highlights the financial strain, lack of safety nets, and emotional toll faced by undocumented families.
Keren’s experiences of being treated as "less than" (39:34-43:12)
Keren describes experiencing discrimination and hurtful stereotypes in everyday social settings, even among people she considered friends. She recalls sitting silently while others made hateful comments about undocumented immigrants, finding it emotionally painful to hear people speak so negatively about a group she belongs to.
“Many times, I've been friends with people, and as I'm sitting at the kitchen table, they say all these hateful things, and it's like, I don't open my mouth, you know. But I'm just like, there, and I have to… it's a really hard pill to swallow.”
She explains that when people discover her immigration status, they often respond by saying she is “different” or “one of the good ones,” which she finds deeply offensive and dehumanizing. Keren also shares an incident where someone referred to undocumented people as “dirty,” prompting her to call her mother to pick her up because she felt so uncomfortable and hurt.
Overall, Keren expresses how being labeled as “one of those people” makes her feel less than human and highlights the emotional toll of constant stereotyping and casual racism in social environments.
Various brands of racism and shifts in recent years (43:23-56:20)
Keren reflects on how discrimination and internalized racism affect both immigrants and broader communities. She explains that negative attitudes toward undocumented people are not limited to white Americans, but also come from within immigrant communities themselves. She describes how colorism in Mexico promotes lighter skin as the beauty ideal, leading many people to reject their own brown identity and try to assimilate into dominant U.S. culture by distancing themselves from other immigrants.
“Because, let me tell you something, in Mexico, the stereotype of beauty is what YOU look like; the whiter, the better. Blue eyes. Oh yeah, the palest skin. They actually brighten their skin. And they bleach their hair naturally. They put these very heavy filters on, and they can't accept that they’re brown.
So in Mexico, anything that the Americans like, they agree with…They want to be y'all. They want to look like y’all.
It's like an older sibling and little sibling. We really look up to y’all. And so when people come over here, they want to fit in so bad, because they were taught that being brown is…it's not a good thing. Because if you're brown, you're dirty. That’s what they tell us growing up, like they call it ‘prietos.’”
She shares that some immigrants, including members of her husband’s family and even undocumented church members, adopt pro-Trump or anti-immigrant attitudes in an effort to “fit in” or avoid being targeted themselves.
"They want to be picked so bad. Even though it applies to them, they will make themselves...they will demonize themselves in order to fit in, or stand out. You know, like, 'I’m not like them, I’m different.'”
Keren emphasizes pride in her Mexican identity, brown skin, and culture, arguing that being bilingual and bicultural does not mean abandoning one’s roots. She also expresses sadness over increasing social division, saying it feels like “everyone is against everyone” across racial and ethnic lines.
A major emotional shift for her has been the change she has seen in churches. What once felt like safe, supportive spaces for undocumented families now feel politicized and hostile.
“You know, what's been, I think, the hardest thing—I can expect that from the world, you know—but one thing that emotionally surprised me more than everything I’ve seen before is the churches. They’ve changed.”
She and Carrie discuss concerns about political idolization in churches, including displays of extremist or nationalist symbolism among children. Keren notes that her family recently left a heavily pro-Trump church and now attends a small church where her parents are serving as pastors, which has felt more supportive and aligned with their values.
Keren’s process of getting permanent residency (56:20-1:09:21)
Keren explains that she obtained temporary legal residency through marriage. Because she and her husband had been married for less than two years, she received a conditional (temporary) green card and will apply for a 10-year permanent residency the following year. After that, she plans to apply for U.S. citizenship. She shares the emotional toll of growing up undocumented, describing a lifelong feeling of not belonging in either the U.S. or Mexico and living with constant fear of deportation, especially for her parents.
"Growing up, I always felt like I didn't belong here. And then when I went to Mexico and visited, I also felt like I didn’t belong there, and I feel like I don't belong anywhere, you know. They don't want me here, and they don't want me there. It's hard."
Although Keren now has legal status, her parents remain undocumented. She says that when she turns 21, she plans to begin the process to help legalize their status, which she expects will bring major emotional relief after years of stress and fear.
“I mean, it's just a very big torment. I'm always afraid for my parents. I’m always afraid.
They're so calm about it. I’m like, ‘Don't drive like that!’ They don’t drive bad, but it’s like, ‘Watch out!’ you know? Like if they speed a little bit, I’m like, ‘Slow down.’
And they're just like, ‘Whatever God has in store for us, it's gonna happen.’ They're like, ‘I can't live in fear. I lived so many years in fear, I just don't want to do it anymore.’”
Keren describes her residency application process as surprisingly smooth and positive, crediting a kind immigration officer during her interview in El Paso. She recalls the moment she was approved as deeply emotional, bringing a sense of freedom and security for herself and her daughter.
“I got this super sweet officer. He served in the Navy, I think, or something like that. It was like, from the very first hello, I already knew we would get along. We just joked the whole time. And it was crazy, because I was looking at the other groups and other people with their officers. They were shaking, like, they were SCARED. And I was so scared of getting one of those people. And I feel like God helped me so much, because this man, this man was God-sent.
It was just…I can’t explain it. It was like, I don't know, it felt like this depression that I had been going through…suddenly everything just turned into colors. I'm finally gonna be with my daughter without being afraid of her being taken away from me and stuff.”
However, she emphasizes how expensive and burdensome the process was. Legal fees cost about $7,000, and additional costs included medical exams, document processing fees, and vaccination requirements, adding thousands more. She describes the medical and vaccination requirements as dehumanizing and discriminatory, saying they made her feel treated like a “laboratory animal.”
Keren also notes that immigration policies shifted during her application period, and she experienced changes in vaccine requirements depending on the administration in power. She reports being required to receive certain vaccines, including COVID-19 and HPV, in order to complete her residency process, even though she was initially told the COVID vaccine would be optional.
Carrie: “Hold on. Let me make sure I'm understanding you right. When you started your process, Biden was president, and the COVID vaccine was NOT mandatory to get your residency?
Keren: It was an option.
Carrie: It was an option.
Keren: The other ones were mandatory, but that one wasn’t.
Carrie: Okay. And then when Trump took office, the COVID vaccine became mandatory to get your papers?
Keren: That was my experience. I don't know if it was everybody else's experience, but that was my experience.”
(Another friend who got her citizenship during the Biden administration confirmed that the COVID vaccine was optional during her process.)
Overall, Keren highlights the emotional, financial, and psychological challenges of navigating the U.S. immigration system.
Keren’s mom working and Keren’s school experience (1:09:21-1:13:40)
Keren describes her mother as someone who worked extremely hard, often taking exhausting early-morning jobs such as working at a tortilla factory at 2 a.m. During high school, Keren’s mother would bring her along to work and then take her directly to school, leaving Keren severely sleep-deprived. Keren says the physical toll of years of labor has visibly affected her mother’s health and appearance.
“My mom worked all her life here, like in restaurants and stuff. She truly overworked, like–the way that she looked before we came here, like now she looks wasted. She just overworked herself in every way.”
Keren also recalls experiencing discrimination when she first started school in the U.S. at age six. She describes her first-grade teacher as unwelcoming. The teacher isolated her by making her sit in the back of the classroom and discouraging her from speaking, even though the class was labeled bilingual. School staff told her and her mother that if she did not learn English within six months, she would be moved down to pre-K, which deeply frightened her.
“[My teacher] was just like, ‘Whatever you do, just sit in the back. Don't talk, don't say anything. Just sit in the back.’
I remember them sitting me down and telling me—they were very discriminatory and manipulative—she sat me down with my mom right next to me, and she was like, ‘If your daughter doesn't learn English in the next six months, we're gonna drop her to pre-K.’ I was six years old. I was thinking to myself, ‘How am I supposed to be in second grade, you know, and I’m over here with all the people in pre-K?’
And so that scared me. And I pushed myself too hard to learn, and I did learn. I learned English in one year.”
Motivated by fear and pressure, Keren pushed herself to learn English and succeeded within a year. While she reflects with pride on her achievement, she also recognizes how emotionally difficult and unfair the situation was for such a young child.
Keren’s recent visit to Mexico and the current state of the country (1:13:40-1:24:00)
Keren shares her first return trip to Mexico in 13 years, which she took on her birthday. While she was excited to reconnect with family, the visit felt emotionally disappointing because many relatives were distant and unwelcoming.
“Yeah, I saw everyone. It wasn't very welcoming, because a lot of people, like, if they didn't grow up being close to you, they're just like, ‘Oh, you're here? Eh.’
I guess my heart was broken a little bit because it’s like, I’ve looked forward to this my whole life, and you’re just like…It just made me realize I have a lot of good things here, you know.”
Although painful, the experience helped her realize that she now has strong roots and meaningful connections in the U.S. Her husband traveled with her, but her parents could not go due to their undocumented status.
She reveals a critical reason her family originally fled Mexico: after receiving threats, her father later learned that his name was on a list of people targeted by violent criminals. On the same day her family left, several people on that list were murdered, making her father the only survivor because he had already crossed into the U.S. The perpetrators were eventually arrested. This event underscores how close her family came to tragedy.
“He’s like, ‘What’s up? What’s going on?’ She's like, ‘You remember you were being threatened by some guys?’ Well, all of those people…the news exposed a list of people, because they had left people dead and naked in the street. My dad was on that list.
The same day that we left, they left those people dead in the street, and the only one that survived was my dad, because we crossed over here. They left them chopped up, naked.
Then those two people got caught, based on all the lists and the proof and all that. They got caught and they got locked up.”
Keren explains that her brother returned to Mexico for a period because of personal relationships and later reentered the U.S. on a tourist visa. During his absence, Keren describes growing up feeling lonely, with only her parents present and missing extended family during holidays and milestones.
She also discusses current conditions in Mexico, noting that cartel violence varies by region. While some areas like Juárez and Sinaloa are extremely dangerous, her hometown is relatively calmer, with people trying to live normal lives despite criminal presence.
“Where we're from, it's really not that bad. They're obviously there. They make themselves known and stuff, but they try to assimilate as if they're not there. Everyone blends into the chaos. They try to live their life as best as possible. It's not as bad where I live. I think you can enjoy your life, semi-good.”
Finally, Keren reflects on social class and cultural differences in Mexico, describing stark wealth inequality and strong social judgment around appearance and status. She contrasts this with the U.S., where she feels people are generally less openly judgmental in public spaces. Her experience visiting an upscale restaurant while dressed casually highlighted these cultural and class tensions.
“I feel like, as bad as racism is with white people over here, because there's rich white Mexicans over there, and there's, you know, rich white Americans over here. I can say that I prefer the white side on this side than the white side over there, cause over there they just think SO highly of themselves. Like you have to be put together. We’re very judgmental.”
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