On the outskirts of Garden City, Kansas, along the smooth two-lane road, past the silos and the grazing cattle, a few semi trucks are parked in the dusty gravel lot below the tall, yellow Super 8 sign. Inside it’s warmth is welcome from the November chill and Janettah Steinmetz is folding bedsheets in the dining area where it’s quiet now. On a wall is a map of the United States with pins poked in where guests have marked their origins and travels. Plastic flowers and utensils are on the counter neatly placed near the orange juice machine and coffee maker. Janetta has a few duties here at the Super 8 motel, she’s on the phone booking rooms and keeping the  reception area nice orderly in her light blue company-issued shirt and tie. With the sheets neatly folded on the table, Janettah pauses for a moment, standing still, holding a bed sheet, and stares out past the glass door and into the dirt lot outside.

Not far into town, following a mass in Spanish, Father Carlos Garcia Pena is baptizing five-year old Adamaris Alvirez in the chapel of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, held by her parents in her white dress, the cool water cascading down her hair and face, the statute or Mary on the wall behind them. Father Pena hugs everyone as they leave his church in this small, sleepy town.

Garden City Mayor Reynaldo Mesa is spending time with the children of immigrants in an ESL class at Edith Scheuerman Elementary School and reads a book as they sit on the floor and hang on his every word. Mayor Mesa is rooted here, his family moved from Mexico years ago and this is home, this little town in the lower left-hand corner of the Jayhawk State.