My family and I are driving cross country from California to our native Texas to attend a family wedding in Austin. This picture was taken an hour east of El Paso. We just went through an immigration checkpoint, where we had to stop and report how many people were in the car. When my husband said, “Six,” the officer looked alarmed and said, “Six? I need to look in your car.” He then opened the back door, peered inside, then asked each person one by one, “Are you an American?” After everyone answered yes and he saw we had a dog, as well, he waved us on through. We think maybe they had a heat sensor that registered seven bodies. We didn’t think to mention our Corgi. A little scary the power these guys have. Out two law students onboard said the border patrol officers could have searched us and ripped into our seats to determine if we had any illegal aliens without any provocation on our part. I realize that illegal immigration is a problem in our country, but I can’t help but think we could redirect these dollars we’re spending on the southern border to a more positive solution. I don’t have answers here since anything of merit would require more research, but I do know that what we passed through felt uncomfortably close to a military state, as if we might be required to produce our “papers” to prove if we belonged here. I couldn’t help but think of a Mexican American boy who is a dear friend of our family who was born in Mexico but who has been in the U.S. since he was seven. He is now twenty and going to college. But he can’t get a driver’s license or federal student loans, and he will have trouble getting a legitimate job once he graduates because of his Catch-22 immigration status. This young man is one of the hardest working people I know, not to mention a fine human being. He is as American as I am. He wouldn’t know what to do if he got deported to Mexico anymore than I would. If he had been with us today, he would have been taken into custody just for riding in our car. That is simply not right. We have to come up with better solutions. Just a few minutes after leaving the border I heard Neal Young singing Woody Guthrie’s “The Land is Your Land, Ths Land Is Our Land.” I couldn’t help but think of this nation of ours – comprised of immigrants – and feel the irony.