On a sweltering June day, Ximena, an incoming college freshman, went with her parents to Houston Community College’s main administrative building equipped with the relevant paperwork for her enrollment.

She hoped to attend the University of Texas at Tyler Honors College, where she’d accepted a $10,000 annual scholarship. Tuition there was expensive, but Ximena’s family was optimistic that between a student job, financial aid, and some loans, they could make it work. While they waited for a final cost estimate, the eighteen year-old decided to kick-start the enrollment process at HCC just in case.

Ximena’s family has lived between the United States and Mexico since she was a toddler; when she was in middle school, her parents moved to Texas, in part to escape the threat of violence in the

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