‘Send me back to Mexico. Get it over with.’

Texas woman fights harsh voter fraud sentence: 'I just wanted them to hear my voice'

The Guardian interview Rosa Maria Ortega in jail as she awaits transfer to a state prison. She’s appealed to the trial judge for a reduced sentence and deportation rather than be forced to spend the next eight years of her life behind bars.

“Send me back to Mexico. Get it over with,” she said in an interview with the Guardian on Friday, sitting behind a glass partition in the Tarrant County corrections centre in downtown Fort Worth, Texas. “I’m done, this is already too much, it’s too much and I’m just sitting there, sitting there, sitting there, and I don’t even sleep, I don’t sleep, I don’t do nothing here. On my mind, from day to night, is my kids.”