![Rosa Maria Ortega near her home in Grand Prairie, Tex., outside Fort Worth. “I voted like a U.S. citizen,” she said. “The only thing is, I didn’t know I couldn’t vote.”]({"default":{"load":"default","w":"73","h":"49","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBylkoR.img?h=680&w=1019&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=1113&y=424"},"dpi":1.4,"size3column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"42","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBylkoR.img?h=584&w=874&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=1113&y=424"},"size2column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"42","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBylkoR.img?h=584&w=874&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=1113&y=424"}})
When Rosa Maria Ortega was a teenager, her
mother was deported to her native Mexico after being arrested twice.
As she grew up, Ms. Ortega decided to take a
different route. Lacking a high school diploma, she signed up for the Job Corps
at age 18 and snagged a position at a state employment office.
In 2012, she registered to vote, and not only
cast ballots in the next two elections but served as a poll worker. Divorced,
she raised four children, now teenagers, sometimes working three jobs.
“When my mom was here, she did everything
illegal,” Ms. Ortega, 37, said in an interview. “I wasn’t going to let that
happen to me.”
She may not have a choice. Ms. Ortega, of
Grand Prairie, Tex., a suburb between Dallas and Fort Worth, is a permanent
resident with a green card, but she is not an American citizen.
In a case that made national headlines last
month, she was found guilty, fined $5,000 and sentenced to eight years in prison because the ballots she
cast in 2012 and 2014 were illegal. Read full story here
© Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times
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