It was about this time last year that Texas Young Lawyers Association Immediate Past President Baili Rhodes and I were invited to participate in a border tour with the American Bar Association. Baili and I toured various detention centers, visited the border, and, more importantly, heard from children themselves about their motivations to come to the U.S. and what their journeys here were like. To say that their stories were heart-wrenching and eye-opening is a gross understatement. Baili and I went back to our hotel that night and couldn’t stop thinking about this situation: What can we do to help? How can we make a difference? I will never forget one boy’s story (told through a translator). He had ridden on top of a train and surrendered at the border for the promise of a better life—one in which he wasn’t scared of being killed and where he would have the opportunity to pursue the American dream to go to school and make money to send back to his family. While listening to him, I realized that I take for granted many of the rights and duties that are afforded to me as an American citizen, and I turned to Baili and she was thinking the same thing. And that’s when Proud to Be an American was born.
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