Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America

On the way to Donnie Young’s funeral, John Hickenlooper hears from the Governor of Colorado, Owens, who tells him that the president of Mexico is scheduled to visit the state soon. Hickenlooper calls the Mexican consul general to tell the president to postpone his meeting or risk encountering protests. The author feels awkward walking in front of the police officers outside the funeral, as if they are on opposite sides of the issue, and she hears police officers deliver eulogies for the dead detective, mentioning Young’s two young daughters. At the grave site, the author meets the detective’s widow, Kelly, and feels afterward: “I didn’t know what the rules were anymore” (153).

After the funeral, the author learns that Marisela had been invited to the event at the Salon Ocampo where the shooting took place. Her boyfriend, Ramiro, a ranch hand, had invited her, but she had decided to go dancing instead. Ramiro had witnessed the murder but hadn’t seen the face of the killer. Ramiro did not go to the police because he had had legal problems and feared he might be deported. Marisela and Ramiro felt no sympathy for García, and Marisela regarded the Salon Ocampo as a special place for her family. She feels that the murder has "cast a pall over the entire hall" (156), and she feels guilty for García’s actions, as they came from the same state in Mexico and was the same age. She and García had followed opposite trajectories.

Marisela becomes involved in the trial of her cousin Roman, who is accused of being present (though not being a perpetrator) in a gang rape. She worships Roman, who had introduced her to independent life outside of her family and who had helped her feel better after her suicide attempt. The case is declared a mistrial, so Roman must be retried. Meanwhile, during the summer, she works as a community organizer at a higher rate than what she had earned at the liquor store. The head of the community organization hires her knowing that she is without documents. She visits him in jail and becomes increasingly more convinced that the system is against people like her. She dreads returning to college, where people do not understand her reality. After going through another mistrial, Roman is convicted, adding to Marisela’s ire against the system. When she throws herself a birthday party in August, she watches the images of Hurricane Katrina and the black victims of the hurricane, and these images increase her anger.

Yadira is more affected by the murder at Salon Ocampo, as her mother, Alma, and her family feel that Alma cannot get a fair trial. Jesus tries to get Alma to move to California, but she decides to move back to Mexico and take her two youngest children with her. The 14-year-old Zulema will stay in the U.S., and Alma asks Yadira to move in with Jesus to help take care of her sister. Yadira refuses, and Jesus moves in with single men while Zulema moves in with an aunt and uncle. Yadira lives with Irene and Justino. 

Even as Yadira’s world falls apart, she makes herself even more together in her presentation, and she buys a fake Social Security card, about which she feels both proud and guilty. Employers begin to ask for actual cards, not just numbers, after the Salon Ocampo incident. The author refers to this incident as “the darkness at the heart of illegal immigration” (162), that innocent people are forced to do illegal things. She asks whether the perpetrator or the law itself is to blame. 

The author goes through court records to figure out what had happened to Alma. She figures out that Alma had purchased a stolen identity. The woman’s identity she stole is named Isbel Morales, and Jesus urged his wife to change jobs two years after purchasing the identity so that the IRS would not twig on to the fact that Isbel Morales was working in two places.

The author finds the real Isbel Morales. She is a hard-working woman who works full-time, attends community college, and has two kids. Finally, the author meets Isbel, who works authorizing insurance claims. The author notices that Isbel’s face has misaligned features. She finds out that Isbel came to the U.S. at age 11 without papers with her aunt after her mother had had brain surgery for a tumor that made her an invalid. She married her boyfriend as a teenager, and he broke her nose and jaw. He was an American citizen, and she went to the INS office without him, though she was supposed to bring him, to get her green card. She told the INS officer that she wanted to work and that she could not bring her husband because he was abusive. The officer said that there were exceptions for people who were victims of abuse and gave her a work permit. He said that if she could document the abuse, she could become a citizen, and he referred to her as a "comal" (166), a griddle that heats up quickly to warm tortillas. She kept in touch with the INS officer and eventually received a resident alien card and wanted to enter law enforcement.

She received notices from the IRS that she had not paid her taxes, and she saw that the notices said she worked at Goodwill. She called Goodwill, and the human resources worker there contacted the police. Isbel is a very determined person who continually called the police while they were working on the case. She felt angry that someone had stolen her hard-won identity, though she also understood why people, such as her second husband, used forged documents, as did Isbel’s friend whom she invited to live with her. She does not feel like she can judge Alma. The experience forces her to finally get her citizenship, while Yadira, hearing about Isbel, feels that it’s ironic that the woman her mother stole her identity from had also been undocumented. 

The author traces the search to find the killer of Danny Young. GómezGarcía enters Mexico two weeks before Yadira’s mother, Alma, and her two youngest children. GómezGarcía drifts to different parts of Mexico, including Durango, and to the small town of Francisco Javier Leyva, where he was born. Mexican agents follow him to Sinaloa, where he visits his grandmother. She has never met him before and does not know if he is who he says he is. He goes to the capital city of Sinaloa and is living with an aunt when his grandmother, paid $30 by agents, lures him to leave the apartment, where he is subsequently nabbed by agents.

Tom Tancredo, considering a run for the presidency, visits New Hampshire and tells people that immigrants are crossing the border to kill them and their family, and the author’s husband is heckled at a speech by members of CAIR who shout: “End the sanctuary!” (174).