I asked my mom what she would do if ICE questioned her, she laughed ,days later she was questioned by a random man.

I wanted to share this experience as it really rattled my mom. She is mixed race, half Native American and half white. She however gets confused for being Hispanic a lot, to the point people have come up to her speaking Spanish and has been told on a few occasions to “go back to her country”.🙄

She isn’t big on politics, and will only know of the big events and that’s only sometimes. So due to recent events of extreme ICE raids I’ve been worried for her, as her job in retail has a lot of traffic and she can run into anyone and almost anyone can come in.

I’ve never been thankful to live in a red state but the one upside is we have less ICE traffic, however they are still very much in the area. Because of this I had a conversation on what she would do if ICE stopped her. She rolled her eyes and said she would be fine and she would fight it in court and sue, and they wouldn’t anyways due to her being native.

I explained that 1.)Native people have been stopped and held in custody and 2.)They are not getting the correct due process. Again she told me I had nothing to worry about as she has had no issues.

A few days later she randomly calls me and apologized for not taking me seriously. She said that at work while helping a man, who was white, early 40s, began to question her race and where she was from.

He started out the conversation with “where are your people from” when she of course told him here he got a little irritated and pressed further. She got irritated as well and told him quite literally from here, that she is native. He dropped it but gave her attitude until she was done with helping him with what she needed. She wanted to walk away but she couldn’t due to her position at the company.

He had his young son (around 5 years old) with him while he was doing this.

My mom was very rattled, she has had people ask her about her background before but she said this felt so rude and off. Almost like he was trying to get a certain answer.

We are currently looking into what she would do it she gets full on stopped, as she now really wants to prepare due to the encounter.