The woman defending Black lives on the border, including her own
REYNOSA, Mexico — So much of her is hyphenated, not just her name: Felicia Rangel-Samponaro. With caramel skin and curly brown hair that's often tied back, she can pass as Latina.
But she identifies as Black.
On the Texas-Mexico border, she's emerged as a vigorous defender of immigrants, and that work often forces her to reckon with how race and ethnicity — real and perceived — shape lives on the border, including her own.
"There's a lot of oppression, discrimination and racism that goes on, on both sides of the border," she said.
Rangel-Samponaro's background has allowed the 45-year-old American to win over skeptics who find they can relate to her, sometimes as Black, sometimes as Latino.
But being a Black border activist is still challenging.
Sometimes, it means getting detained by U.S. Customs, then subjected to a cavity search. Other times, it means confronting Central American migrants cracking racist jokes or correcting people on both sides of the border who assume her white male employee is her boss.
Immigration was not at the forefront of her mind when groups of asylum-seekers appeared here three years ago. She was a suburban stay-home mom living in the border city of Brownsville with a son in private school. She wore pricey Lululemon activewear, drove a Mercedes and in her spare time,
