Jimena Villanueva works on a letter of support to immigrants in Sally White's classroom at Chattanooga Central High School on Wednesday, June 27, 2018 in Harrison, Tenn. White, a teacher at Central, helped organize an event for current and former students to write letters of support to immigrants. White will be delivering the letters along with donations and funds.As news of immigrant families' experiences at the United States border with Mexico broke, including the release of an audio recording of Spanish-speaking children crying out for their parents at an immigration facility, Sally White decided she had to do something.
So when she learned a friend and fellow educator, Alice Gambino, planned on traveling to Texas from Maryland, to do what she can at the border, White, an English and theater teacher at Central High School in Chattanooga, decided she would go with her.
They plan to bring donations of supplies and funds to asylum seekers and immigrants at a port of entry in Hidalgo, Texas - they've already raised more than $2,400 through a fundraiser on a crowd-sourcing site.
But the most important thing White plans to take with her as they head south later this month is what is inside a shiny gold box - letters of hope.
Last week, a group of current and former Central High School students, mostly members of the school's theater program and former students of White herself, gathered to write dozens of letters of support for their teacher to deliver to immigrant families at the border.
Though President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending the separation of families at the border on June 20, hundreds of families still wait to be reunited.
For Jimena Villanueva, 16, whose parents emigrated from Mexico themselves decades ago, the thought of being separated from her family is almost too much to bear.
"Knowing I had family that struggled with getting here, knowing people who struggled," she said. "It's really depressing and really opened my eyes as a person to how I've been blessed."
Villanueva, a rising senior at Central, helped her fellow classmates craft letters on delicate stationary and tie them with ribbon Wednesday. She coached them on phrases such as "Te enviamos amor" (we send you love), which White had written on the whiteboard in her classroom.
"If I was separated from my family and my siblings, I wouldn't be the person I am today," Villanueva said. "I'm writing these letters of hope, telling them to have hope, that they are going to have the life they want to keep fighting."
Hannah Stone, 20, one of White's former students and a current student at Lee University, said she was glad her former teacher provided this opportunity for the students to do something.
"It's scary, it's sad, it's heartbreaking. I don't know what to do on a personal level, but this is a good start," Stone said. "I want to tell these kids that they have stories to tell."
Stone works at a hotel in Cleveland, Tennessee, and said several of her co-workers are themselves immigrants.
"Our housekeeping manager is from Uruguay," Stone said. "She's talked about how she would be horrified if her kids had been taken from her when she came."
Jake Johns, 17, a rising senior, also said he hoped the messages White delivers show that there are Americans who support and embrace immigrants, despite how they might feel upon arrival or during detention.
"Not all Americans are bad, we're not terrible people," Johns said. "The way it looks right now is that we are terrible people and we don't want them to come to our country, but we want to love and support them."
White said she invited many of these students to participate in the letter-writing campaign because she "knows their hearts."
"We are filling it as much as we can, just to [show] we're here to support you," White said.
Contact staff writer Meghan Mangrum at mmangrum@timesfreepress.com or 423-757- 6592. Follow her on Twitter @memangrum.