In some ways, there’s a template for being a teenage girl in America: ballet and soccer, school and church, guitar-strumming and texting. But for teenagers growing up in the Rio Grande Valley, where Mexico and the United States come together in a lush land of brush-covered hills, fast-growing cities and deep, shared history, there is no template. They are shaped by an extraordinary place, at an extraordinary time.
Valley girls are Americans with Mexican roots. They are Mexicans with American dreams.
They meet their friends at the mall, at Whataburger, at the volleyball court. But many live with the daily drama of poverty and deportation, in households that often cannot afford a car or even a quinceañera dress.
Ten miles from the border in the Rio Grande Valley city of McAllen, Texas, the water was shut off not long ago at the family home of Isabella Ruiz, 14; her undocumented father had been picked up by immigration authorities, and the case consumed all the family’s money. The worries about immigration status always linger in the background: When Isabella went on a vacation to Corpus Christi with her aunt, her parents could not go along, because they knew there would be Border Patrol traffic checkpoints along the way.
“My dad, he didn’t want to risk it,” Isabella said.
To grow up in the Valley is to live in a bilingual, binational world that defies the barriers dividing the two countries. Some Valley girls have relatives on both sides and, depending on their schedules, live on both sides, sleeping over here one day and over there the next. Carolina Sierra, 15, lives in the city of Brownsville; her boyfriend lives in Mexico, crossing the bridge from Matamoros every weekend to see her.
On the American side, towns like McAllen and Brownsville are much like any other small town, and life has a distinctly suburban feel. But home is also one of the poorest places in the nation, with some of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy, high-school dropouts and child poverty. In Hidalgo County, 43.8 percent of children and teenagers under 18 live below the poverty level, far exceeding the 25 percent rate in Houston.
On the Mexican side, it can be even harder: Clara Medina, 15, works seven days a week at a nail salon in a border town popular with American tourists, Nuevo Progreso. She left school around the age of 12 to help support her family.
“Life is not easy down here,” said Lesly Urbina, 16, who dreams of becoming Miss Alamo. “You have to try your best to be up there. You’re going to have to go through a lot of things, but you’ll get there eventually.”
Here, in their own words, are some of the girls of the Rio Grande Valley, who call the border their home.
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‘I didn’t expect to get pregnant at 16 years old.’
Gwen Burnias turned 17 on Feb. 4. Four weeks later, she gave birth to her son, Jaxon. Her boyfriend, Michael, is 16. Gwen, Jaxon and Michael live at Michael’s grandparents’ house in Weslaco, Texas. Her 19-year-old sister also recently had a baby.
It was really hard, because my mother wanted better for me. She would tell all the stories of why she wanted better for us. I did the exact opposite. My father, at first he didn’t want anything to do with me at all. But he apologized to me about the things he said, and, you know, now we’re doing all right, for now.
Mikey is just very distracted right now. Very distracted. And I understand, you know. He’s still 16 years old. I didn’t expect to get pregnant at 16 years old. I had this whole plan for my life. I loved volleyball. I was so good. I was captain for three years straight in a row. And I just ruined so much of it. I’ve cried so much by myself or to my tia, because he just doesn’t get it. He’s very childish, and it’s very frustrating, because I feel like I will have to do everything by myself, and eventually I am. And my mother tells me all the time, “You will do everything by yourself. That’s what all of us do.”
I need him to be a father. I don’t need him to be a teenager, to play sports. I need him to get a job. I need him to financially support us. And if he won’t, then I will. I know I can.
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‘Ever since then, I’m scared of windows.’
Lesly Urbina, 16, a high school junior in Alamo, competes in beauty pageants. Her parents are undocumented. She lives in a colonia, one of the largely unregulated and impoverished communities along the border that have few basic services. The streetlights on her block are solar-powered.
We actually had to get signatures so we could get those. Because at night, it was, like, really dark, and we couldn’t even see anything, just the cars passing, and little kids would play outside. So we’re like, no, we need light. So we got signatures, and then they came and they put those. And then people started breaking them, so we just have, like, one working right now.
This is Little Mex. That’s what they call it. Supposedly it’s one of the most dangerous. I personally feel, like, really safe here where we live. I don’t think I would feel comfortable moving. Everyone cares about each other. We protect each other.
When we were small, it was traumatizing because we had a gang in front. We would have shootings. Drive-bys. We would hear gunshots at night, and we would just be like, “Oh, it’s normal.”
Someone opened my window. When I was asleep. And then I just felt someone touching me here on my stomach. I literally thought they were going to drag me out of the window or something. I think I was 10. So I freaked out and I woke up and I went to my sister’s room. The next day my father went around and the window was still open. Ever since then, I’m scared of windows.
I’m into modeling, and I try to involve myself into a lot of community service. I actually had a pageant this Saturday, but it didn’t go that well. I didn’t get the place that I wanted. I’m going up for Miss Alamo next year. My parents didn’t really support me at first. They don’t really support me, but I still do it.
When I started hearing the news about Trump, it really did scare me. But knowing my parents, they’re like, “Oh no, if they deport us, we’re going to come back.” And they’re actually trying to fix their papers now.
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‘I see my parents have to go through the stress.’
Isabella Ruiz, 14, a freshman in McAllen, wants to become a veterinarian. Her father, who is undocumented, was arrested in December and held at Port Isabel Detention Center, operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 60 miles east of McAllen. He was released in January, but the family has struggled financially since then: their water was shut off for lack of payment, and they had to carry bottles and buckets from her grandfather’s house.
When my dad was in jail, my mom, she would have to pay all the bail bonds and everything. So at one point we didn’t have water for, like, two weeks. We would have to go over there to take showers, and then put the water in the buckets. We’d fill them up over there and then put them back in the car and then bring them down.
My mom transports people to dialysis or wherever they need to go. My dad works as a cook in a restaurant.
I see my parents have to go through the stress. My mom wants to find a second job. I just feel bad because they have to do all this stuff, and I’m not 16 yet, so I can’t help them. As soon as I turn 16, I want to put in my applications so I can help them with the bills and everything. I mean, school comes first, but I’m planning on working and doing school so I can help them out. My mom has always told me, “You’re going to go to college.” I know it’s going to be a struggle, but I have to go. I want to do something with my life. I don’t want to struggle as much as my parents did to support their family.
When my dad was in ICE, I didn’t really want to go out or anything.
One time, my friend asked me to go and I said no, but then my mom made me, because she saw how I was just here at the house. We would go visit him sometimes, but then it would make me more sad because I would just see him through a glass. When he got released, we were there waiting. I just saw him get out of the van and I just ran to him. Me and my mom ran to him and he hugged us, and I just started crying.
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‘I miss out on a lot of things.’
Jocelyn Guzman, 18, lives in Matamoros, Mexico, but crosses the border to attend high school in Brownsville. She is a U.S. citizen. Her mother, who earns the equivalent of $100 a week at a Mexican auto-parts factory, spends half her salary on the vans that transport Jocelyn back and forth across the bridges.
I have to wake up at 4, or sometimes when I’m really sleepy I wake up at 4:10 in the morning. My mom takes me to the store that’s really near from here, S Mart. I get in a little van that takes us to school every day.
From home to school, with all that, I think it takes me maybe two hours. I’m also counting the line that there is on the puente, the bridge. I get to school around 7:40. First and second, I love those two periods. They teach us everything about nursing. At the end of the year, if I get certified, I’m going to be certified as a patient care technician. I’ve learned how to do EKGs. Right now we’re into phlebotomy.
The bell rings at 4:05, and that’s when I walk to get in the van and come home. We meet up next to Family Dollar and we meet up with the other vans.
I go to bed sometimes at 10 when I don’t have a lot of homework. But when I study for a test I go to bed really late. I go to bed around 12 or 1. Sometimes I’m really sleepy in school and it’s hard. Sometimes teachers can see you differently or judge you, so I don’t tell many people that I go back and forth. Sometimes I miss out on a lot of things because I don’t live over there. And I don’t live over there because my parents can’t live over there with me. They’re not U.S. citizens.
Like my mom said, my dad, always, he fights for what he wants. And I’ve learned that from him. My goal is to finish school, go to college, finish college, and I want to work and I want to get paid money, so I can help them move over there with me. I want to pay them back.
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‘White suburbs and big cities: I’m like, how boring.’
Emily Gurwitz, 18, a senior in McAllen, is a ballet dancer, soccer-team captain and Hebrew-school teacher at her synagogue. In her college admissions essay, she summed up being Jewish in a Mexican-American city at the Texas border by coining a phrase to describe herself: a Jewish Texican.
I was at this summer thing. It’s called the Welch Summer Scholar program. I did research at U.T. for five weeks. So I lived in a dorm, and it was just me and eight other juniors in high school. It was right around the time when a lot of stuff started happening at the border. We would turn on the news and it would be in McAllen, and they were like, “Emily, this is so crazy, you’re from McAllen.”
It seems so crazy, but if you’re in McAllen, you’re just in McAllen. There’s nothing so dramatic happening, like it seems on the news. People just associate McAllen as this, like, border wasteland or something, where there’s, like, nothing happening except detention of illegal immigrants or something. But that’s not what it’s like at all. We have great education, great social life, great community. McAllen is so cool. The people I was with this summer are from mostly wealthy, very white suburbs and big cities: I’m like, how boring.
I started volunteering at the migrant respite center with my friends. One day I made sandwiches for three hours.
If you don’t go to the respite center, you will never see the people who are crossing the border. I guess I was the most touched by the kids who were there who are my age. Because once you turn 18, you’re, like, an adult, and so you have to have one of those ankle monitors on. And this girl had just showered and she put on her new clothes, and she was like, “Oh, I need a pair of scissors,” in Spanish. And I had handed them to her and I was like, what could she possibly need scissors for? And she had to cut her pants because she couldn’t get it over the ankle monitor. And she’s, like, my age. Imagine what she’s gone through just to get here. And now she can’t just be normal.
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‘I want to join the military like my mom did.’
Gaby Brown, 15, a freshman in McAllen, celebrated her quinceañera with relatives from both Mexico and the United States. Her mother is Hispanic, her father is white and her mother’s boyfriend, whom she calls her stepfather, is Hispanic. She supports the president’s idea to expand the border wall.
Me and my mom are always going on about it. Honestly, I think it’s a good idea. Coming out and saying that we need it, I honestly think we really do need it.
I want to join the military like my mom did. I want to go into the Army, but she wants me to go into the Air Force, because she says that’s the safer side. And then when I get out, I want to go into the medical field, like helping other people with their mental problems. Growing up, my mom has been through a whole bunch of stress because of the military. She has PTSD. And I have depression and anxiety. I want to help someone else that has those problems as well.
Music’s a real big factor in my life. It helps me cope with my problems. When I get upset I kind of tune out the world and just listen to music. I listen to indies, R&B;, hip-hop, rap, country, Mexican music, everything.
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‘When I see Border Patrol, I think about them taking my parents.’
Beverly Godinez, 16, a junior in Alamo, is a member of the junior ROTC program and spends her summers doing missionary work in Michoacán in western Mexico. Her mother and father are both undocumented.
When I think about them taking my parents, I feel anger. When I see Border Patrol, I think about them taking my parents. It makes things kind of difficult in a way.
A few weeks back, when we were taking my sister to Laredo, we got stopped by a police officer. I know that they can’t do nothing about it, because they’re not Border Patrol. But it kind of gets you nervous. It was because one of my sisters didn’t have the seat belt on, so they pulled us over.
I’m trying to graduate with honors and get my associate’s. We have a program here in high school where they give you the opportunity to take college classes, and if you complete those college classes that go with your major, you can graduate with your associate’s. Now I come home and I don’t even turn on the TV or anything, I just go straight to do homework.
There are people in my school and they kind of, like, discriminate. Actually, I got in a fight. Well, not in a fight, but an argument with this kid, because he was making fun of this girl for not being able to speak English.
This was a few weeks ago. We were in a classroom and I was sitting in the corner because I was charging my phone. He was talking English, so that she couldn’t understand. I think that’s why I stepped in, because she couldn’t talk for herself. And I got in the way, and I was, like, telling him off. I was calling him ignorant. And he was like, “Oh yes, you know what the word ‘ignorant’ means,” like calling me stupid. And then he stayed quiet. I was mad, so I just stayed quiet, too.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.