The New York Times dives deeper into the child custody case in Lebanon in which Judge Barry Tatum ordered a Mexican mother to learn English or risk losing her child.
"For 11-year-old Linda Berrera Cano, life changed with the stroke of a judge's pen. Lifted out of a crowded trailer where meals might consist of nothing but tortillas, she now lives in a brick ranch house with a basketball hoop in the driveway, a swimming pool in the backyard, and her own twin bed and wooden vanity."
"She has not seen her mother [Felipe Berrera], an illiterate factory worker from Mexico who speaks only the indigenous language Mixtecan, in over a year. Instead, she calls Emily and Warren Patterson her mommy and daddy, as in, 'Look, Mommy, I can do the monkey bars.'"
"Ms. Berrera's situation drew wide attention and considerable outrage in October when a county judge in this town near Nashville ordered her to learn English or run the risk of 'losing any connection - legally, morally and physically - with her daughter forever.' But the case is far more nuanced than that stark command suggests, raising questions of cultural misunderstanding, good intentions and bad communication in a place that, like much of the South, is struggling to absorb rapid demographic change."
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