Karen Tome Sanchez

I was born in a beautiful city called Tijuana, located in northern Mexico, a border city with the United States. Growing up in one of the most crossed borders globally, I was used to seeing people trying to cross the border through the desert and seeing the despair and disappointment when they failed. However, I never got to think about their suffering and fear when entering the country until I immigrated to the U.S. It wasn't until one day, I saw a man in front of me in a grocery store being asked for papers and told he would be deported. As he begged not to be separated from his family, I knew I needed it to do something.

Since then, I've developed a passion for research based on human rights and inequality. As thousands of caravans from Haiti, Salvador, Brazil, and Guatemala continue to arrive in Tijuana, I expect to get the tools I need to study the barriers immigrants face when trying to cross and once they manage to enter the country in search of their "American Dream".