Maybe I have become soft in my older days or I am becoming more of a girl every day, but season 7 of Orange Is The New Black has had me pretty much crying in every episode. I loved the small arc of reintroducing the Maritza character, she is such a pretty petite little thing that just never fit in as a criminal, even if she did think her poop didn't smell. This time we see her enjoying life outside of prison doing dumb stuff that someone her age might do, like hanging out in clubs, even if the clubs are illegal and filled with illegals. She gets caught up in an ICE sweep and because she doesn't have ID, she is taken to a deportation camp "until things get cleared up." She meets up with Blanca who in the first season was disgusting and would not shower and poop herself so the guards would not touch her. She grew into a very likable character once she became a "regular", going through a makeover by Maritza and Flacca.
Maritza goes in pissed knowing this is all a big misunderstanding, then she has to realize that things are not going to get better. To make calls, you need money, nobody has money because nobody knows you are there. To get money you must then use a machine that the ICE people know and don't care is broke. The best analogy of being in there new versus a few days and being broken by the system is Maritza sees a blue bird and tells Blanca "that bird is a sign of good fortune...", while Blanca barely acknowledges the bird and responds "that bird is here to remind you that even inside a building, you can still get shit on, don't expect help." By this time Maritza is starting to accept that no one is coming to save her and giving up hope. Then the cavalry shows up when the cafeteria doors are opened and the Litchfield girls are there, including her old bestie, Flacca. I truly thought this meant the usual "never give up, there is always a way." Reality does not work that way, I guess.
Flacca finds Maritza's mom and finds out she was not born in the US, but is in fact a Colombian national. Her mom fled with her when she was a baby, so she never technically lived in Colombia and has no connections but that doesn't stop ICE from doing the ultimate punishment to those that belong here. The guards get "tired of her shit" when she decides the best thing to do is get the number of the one lawyer Flacca has found her to help her.
Through a backdrop of a sad acoustic guitar we see her get driven to a big jet plane filled with other "horrible" people who don't belong here and gradually the plane thins out until she finally disappears from her seat to where we must imagine she is delivered to her home country where she knows no one and who knows what happens to a stranger in a strange land. I know this is fictional and even my mom was like "why are you getting emotional over the show?" I understand getting rid of real troublemakers, drug dealers, killers, people that don't contribute positively to society, sure dump them into the ocean, I don't care, but she was just a dummy that made some bad choices and ended up paying a very heavy price.
We are never going to hear their stories, but how many people who have lived here 20-40 years in this new age of Trump will this happen to them and like in some weird 80s movie, people are just "disappeared overnight?" Round up the assholes and troublemakers, but leave the pretty ones alone.
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