By the time I became a teenager in La Jolla, California, my family was in severe crisis. My home was fractured and I was drifting, taking a lot of drugs, and drinking heavily.

When a family of Mexican immigrants, who had only recently arrived in San Diego, invited me to spend the summer with them in Mexico, I thought it was because their kids, with whom I had become friendly, had asked their parents to take me along.

Many years later, I realized that this family — who was deeply religious and had a profound sense of charity — was trying to help me get through one of the worst times in my life. I did go to Mexico with them that summer and when we got back, I started spending more time at their house than my own.

The mom never mentioned that she was trying to help me. I only realized it years later. She never made that weigh on me. She just let me live my life in a safe and secure environment. Ultimately, I got my head back on straight, got my grades up again, got into UCLA, and got as far away from La Jolla as I could.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that family these days as we watch families in our own community being torn apart by the U.S. government. The stories I’m hearing from Southern California (where I grew up) and Southeast Texas (where I’ve lived for a decade and a half) are horrifying and heartbreaking.

I honestly don’t know where I’d be today without that family so many years ago in San Diego.

In other news, the Trump administration is using a classic Ku Klux Klan and Sons of Confederate Veterans tactic to re-institutionalize the names of military bases. As I read in the paper today, they are re-naming Fort Gregg-Adams as “Fort Lee,” but they are claiming the Lee in question was a Black soldier. No offense to the Black Lee but this move is as insulting as it is offensive.

In other other news, I also read that Trump is destroying the Fulbright scholarship program. I was a Fulbright scholar. I can only wonder how my life would be different today had I not had that opportunity.

This is not American greatness. It’s American rot.