After a 2013 traffic stop exposed her undocumented status, Alejandra Juarez, 43, was confronted by the officer, and eventually deported to Mexico in August 2018 in the wake of the Trump administration’s strict .

“Despite my mom being a military wife and having no criminal record she was deported,” Estela, 13, told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. “I think it’s very important for people to understand how our immigration laws not only hurt undocumented immigrants, but also the whole family.”

Transforming her childhood love of journal writing, Estela is now sharing her story as the daughter of an undocumented immigrant in “Until Someone Listens,” a children’s book co-written with Lissette Norman.

With illustrations by Teresa Martínez, Estela recalls her mother’s journey to permanently reside in the United States.

After living apart from her family for over three years, the Biden administration granted Alejandra a , which was recently extended until May 2023.

In the interim, Alejandra has joined Estela’s book tour to not only advocate for her own U.S. residency but also comprehensive immigration reform.

“The feedback we got from a lot of hardcore Republicans and former Donald Trump supporters is that when they hear our story from the perspective of a child, it makes them change their mind,” Alejandra told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. “And that’s my hope – by Estela telling her story, immigration rules can change.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ: For Estela, tell me more about “Until Someone Listens” and why writing a book was the best way to capture your story.

Estela: I know that there are many kids out there with a similar situation as me. I wanted to create a book in a way where it could inspire other children and let them know there’s somebody out there that’s going through the same situation as you.

What is the key takeaway you would want someone reading “Until Someone Listens” to understand about your story?

Estela: I would like them to know that my story is one of many. And by reading the book, I hope they understand how our immigration laws really, really hurt families.

You write in your book “Some see people like my mom as ugly weeds that need to be plucked out of the dirt. But they’re not weeds. They’re wildflowers, all with pretty shapes and colors, each one a different kind of beauty.” What were your thoughts as you wrote this?

Estela: I know many people think my mom doesn’t deserve to live in this country and be with her family over here. She contributes so much to this country yet most people see her as a criminal – but she’s not a criminal and she’s not causing any harm.

After his election in 2016, former President Donald Trump adopted a “zero-tolerance” policy on undocumented immigrants which placed Alejandra on a high priority deportation list. For Alejandra, tell me more about what was going through your mind when this happened.

Alejandra: The best way to explain to you is that I couldn’t believe it. Even when I got deported, I thought that they were going to bring me back. I thought that they were going to say we made a mistake. It took me a year and a half to realize that it really happened. I just couldn’t believe it. The cruelty of the Trump administration to do that to a stay-at-home mom with no criminal record and, on top of that, a military wife. I couldn’t comprehend it. So much evilness and cruelty.

Your story has been shared through not just a book tour, but also a and even the . With that in mind, what’s something about your story either no one asks or no one realizes it’s important to ask?

Estela: Most people should know that my dad is a military veteran. Despite my mom being a military wife and having no criminal record she was deported. And I think it’s very important for people to understand how our immigration laws not only hurt undocumented immigrants, but also the whole family.

Alejandra: What nobody asks is how many more people like us are out there. People want to believe that there are only a few of us. There are more than a million undocumented people with an American child. So like Estela mentioned before, our story is the same story of too many.

On the topic of your dad Estela and husband Alejandra, I understand that he is a naturalized U.S. citizen, served in the Marines and voted for Trump in 2016 because he thought he would protect military families. What is your hope for the Biden administration in regards to U.S. immigration policies?

Estela: I know this administration has a good heart and I know that they care about military families. I hope that by hearing my story, they can change those broken immigration laws because that’s the only way my mother will be able to stay here permanently. It’s not just important for us but many other families to be reunited again.

Alejandra: I have hope for this administration. I believe that they have the heart and the intention to change their broken immigration laws. I know that Congress needs to act. We did Estela’s first book tour at two schools and we just came back. The feedback we got from a lot of hardcore Republicans and former Donald Trump supporters is that when they hear our story from the perspective of a child, it makes them change their mind. And that’s my hope – by Estela telling her story, immigration rules can change.

You speak about your experiences with so much courage and conviction. Where does your strength come from?

Estela: For me, I started to really use my voice and spread the message about my mom’s story when she was getting deported. I saw how, even after she came back, the trauma she had. It always stays in my mind and really burns my fire to want to continue sharing my story.

Alejandra: I am a very spiritual person and my strength comes from God. There’s no way to fix this unless immigration laws change. I was told by 32 lawyers that there was no way I was going to be able to come back. So the fact that I am back and that I am here thanks to that was featured in the Democratic Convention makes me think that things can change. I mean, if I was able to come back even temporarily then maybe there’s a way we can fix immigration laws permanently. So that gives me the strength and the courage to know that it can be done.

What advice would you give someone in a similar circumstance that’s too scared to share their story?

Estela: If you’re too scared to fight, just know that I am over here fighting for you and I won’t stop until I see more families reunited. Even if by some miracle my mom is allowed to stay here permanently, I will never stop fighting until immigration laws are changed.

Alejandra: The first thing I’d tell them is nothing comes out of being silent. So you have to keep talking. You have to keep writing. One of the things that I have talked to a few kids about when we did school visits is to Google who your local legislator is and send them a letter. By sending them letters we put pressure on legislators to change the laws. The only way you can make sure the laws are going to change is if we put enough pressure and get people to talk.

What do next steps look like as you continue pushing for comprehensive immigration reform?

Estela: I’m currently writing another book for the adult and teenage audience that goes into even more detail about my experience being the daughter of an undocumented immigrant. I also hope to see more child authors sharing their story and to see other people get inspired by my story.

Alejandra: I want Hispanic kids to write and read. That’s the main thing. We need to get more educated. I want first and second generation Hispanic kids to be like “if she could do it, I can do it too.” The fact that we went to a book fair with 50 other authors, only five of them were minorities and Estela was the only child. For me, we need to be an example for kids. And then of course inspire kids to push for immigration laws to change. But the main thing is, we as Hispanic people and as a minority need to get educated and start reading more.

Born Gloria Jean Watkins in rural, segregated Kentucky, hooks graduated from Stanford University in 1974 with a degree in English literature. Throughout the course of her career, she wrote dozens of books under the name she adopted to honor her maternal great-grandmother. Each one helped cement her reputation as a great thinker, a woman whose observations about education, race and love would earn iconic status among the many students she taught through the years and the hordes of other college and graduate students assigned her work.

“To me the classroom continues to be a place where paradise can be realized, a place of passion and possibility, a place where spirit matters, where all that we learn and know leads us into greater connection, into greater understanding of life lived in community,” she wrote in her 2003 book, .

A feminist scholar and social activist, hooks was most recently a distinguished professor in residence in Appalacian studies at Berea College. She died Dec. 15 at age 69 after an extended illness, the Kentucky university.  

Stephanie J. Hull is the president and CEO of Girls Inc., a national organization that serves — through programing and advocacy — more than 132,000 girls through a network of 80 local organizations across the U.S. and Canada. She was first introduced to hooks in graduate school at Harvard and later taught some of her work at Dartmouth.

“I never read or heard anything from her that I didn’t admire,” Hull said of hooks. “What she spoke was important. What she wrote was important. Her way of thinking and her approach was so transformative 
 and so challenging — but in a very productive way.”

Hull knew her own accomplishments were substantive, having risen to academic heights as a Black woman in the 1960s and ’70s. But, she said, she didn’t feel the weight of racism in her daily life, in part because of women like hooks.

“She broke that ground and made it less remarkable for me,” Hull said. “bell hooks meant for us to build on what she built. I don’t think she meant for us to stop at that point. Her work says, ‘Keep going.’”

That’s exactly what Ashley Rodriguez Lantigua, 20, hopes to do. A first-generation college student, she was particularly moved by hooks’s book  A student at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, she wants to one day work in education.

She said she drew inspiration from hooks’s assertion that love should be at the center of the classroom. If that were the case, Rodriguez Lantigua said, schools would look remarkably different.

“Without an ethic of love in a classroom, we can’t center wellness, especially in the schools I have gone through, public schools, with their focus on standardized testing,” Rodriguez Lantigua said, adding that hooks encouraged her to create something better. “I see it as a space for healing where children are reminded of their power and their ability to dream.”  

But hooks’s work wasn’t just about helping others. Serena Natile, an academic and feminist activist, said Teaching to Transgress made her feel legitimized, allowing her to abandon the stereotype she had come to embrace as a standard for the field — one she did not fit.

“My strength was very different and was a great one and I had to use that — not to lecture behind the table, but create more conversations with students, changing the way they would approach me 
 and listen to them more,” said Natile, an assistant professor at the University of Warwick’s School of Law in the U.K.

An English professor at the University of Central Florida, Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés admired hooks as a teacher, writer and critic. 

“The one thing that stood out to me from the beginning was how directly she spoke to the reader — with no footnotes, no highfalutin’ academic lingo,” RodrĂ­guez MilanĂ©s said. “She was writing in plain English and it was really impressive to me. It made me think, ‘I belong in academe, too.’”

RodrĂ­guez MilanĂ©s said hooks also helped her fight the imposter syndrome she’s battled throughout her career, her fear that someone might some day rip away the Ph.D. she worked so hard to earn. And while hooks might have, in her early works, appealed mostly to Black women, she later expanded to all.

“By the time we got to Teaching to Transgress and Feminism is for Everyone, she was reaching across different communities,” she said, adding that the Latin community started to quote her work, reflecting its universality.   

Sarah Brown, senior educational specialist at the Center for Powerful Public Schools, an organization founded in 2003 to help schools create a more equitable and motivational learning environment, is dedicating the next year to rereading hooks’s works.

“There are just so many aspects of my different identities that she spoke to,” Brown said. “There is only one bell hooks, only one who could so eloquently and yet succinctly capture it all.”

Alicia Montgomery, the Center’s executive director, said hooks encouraged Black women such as herself to speak up and be heard no matter how their opinions are received.

“She would say things people would not like,” Montgomery said. “When you want to be authentically yourself, you have to do that knowing what it is going to cost.”

Hooks’s legacy will live on through those she’s touched, Montgomery said.

“We will speak her into existence,” she said, adding hooks’s work is no doubt inspiring other young Black and brown thought leaders in the making. “I’m waiting to see what that next bell hooks has to say.”