A shirt with the slogan “got papers?” featuring the silhouette of a family fleeing caused outrage in Port Arthur, Texas. The T-shirt leaves nothing to the imagination and would only be worn by someone who delights in interrogating the immigration status of others. 

The Ebony Mart on Gulfway Drive, where the t-shirt is sold, is a hot spot for Latinx families in Port Arthur. 

“A lot of friends, family, everybody know this store. I knew this store since I was a baby,” Kathy Delarosa told KFDM News she visits the store two or three times a week. 

The 21-year-old was a loyal customer so when she visited Ebony Mart and saw the t-shirt in person, she was naturally upset. 

“I don’t think it’s really nice to have for the store because a lot of Hispanics will get offended. I don’t think they should sell it at all,” she said.

The Port Arthur Latinx community is not happy with Ebony Mart. 

Store owner apologizes for t-shirt many consider anti-immigrant and offensive to Hispanics. Angel San Juan investigates.https://t.co/Rk8xIrnOGz pic.twitter.com/GWxgmZyzaA

— KFDM News (@kfdmnews) December 31, 2019

Needless to say, seeing the t-shirt in their community did not make Latinx residents feel at home or welcome. The Port Arthur members felt like it was a slap in the face to immigrants. 

The owner, whose identity has not been revealed, claimed that she did not know the t-shirt was a part of a store order, according to KFDM. When KFDM spoke with the owner over the phone she said she no longer sold the shirts, instructed her manager to remove all of them from the racks, and extended an apology to the immigrant community. 

A candidate for Port Arthur City Council, Armando Ruiz, was not happy with the t-shirt either. 

“That’s outrageous,” said Ruiz. “That’s crazy. How a store would put out that type of product out there to sell. This is where I used to buy my uniforms, back when I went to school seven years ago. So this store is frequented a lot. It’s in a predominantly Hispanic area. A lot of Hispanics do come to this store.”

Political and offensive t-shirts appear to be a trend in the Trump era. 

Bloomingdale's Apologizes Over 'Fake News' T-Shirt, Pulls It From Stores https://t.co/G56gMv0Jzh pic.twitter.com/iFMzIdMbp2

— TheWrap (@TheWrap) February 12, 2019

T-shirts seemingly geared toward Trump supporters have been making the rounds, many of them have been singled out as offensive. Extrapolate what you will with regards to what that says about fans of the president. Just this week Bloomingdales was forced to remove a t-shirt that said one of Trump’s favorite phrases “Fake News.” 

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and we apologize for any offense we may have caused. We take this feedback very seriously and are working quickly to remove this t-shirt. Again, thank you for taking the time to alert us,” the brand said in a statement. 

However, Pamela Wood s Baltimore journalist was not satisfied with the response saying, “Apologizing ‘for any offense we may have caused’ is not a sincere apology. This is not about journalists’ hurt feelings. This is about damage done to our democracy when your brand joins in perpetuating and celebrating the idea of “fake news.” Please try again.”

Port Arthur Residents feel business owners should be mindful of who they are selling to.

Latinos are not a minority in Texas. We are 40% percent of the population, and half of children under 18 are Latino. That’s generations of political power coming down the pipeline.

Don’t buy into the old mentality that we’re at the mercy of the status quo. The future is ours!

— Antonio Arellano (@AntonioArellano) January 3, 2020

Texas is one of the most diverse states with Houston being the most diverse city in the country. Port Arthur is multicultural as well with Blacks making up 41 percent of the population, Whites 37 percent, and Latinx-identifying folks making up 29.6 percent of the population according to 2010 Census data. 

“When I saw the shirt, it is very offensive,” said Henry Jones III. “You have different ethnic groups in this area. In Southeast Texas, you have to be very careful what type of product you put out because you don’t want to offend people especially with something of that sort.”

Ruiz echoed Jones’ sentiment saying business owners need to be mindful of the communities they are representing. 

“They should look at the product before they put it out there to sell for the community,” said Ruiz. “They do need to look around their surroundings and see what type of people live in their community and check out what type of product they can have and can’t have.”

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After five days of search and rescue, a 4-year-old Brazilian girl was found alive a mile from her home in the rainforest. Her family had last seen her with her 8-year-old sister in a canoe, prompting family and search and rescue to assume the girl drowned in the river. That means that folks were scouring the nearby river instead of the nearby rainforest to find the girl. It was her 8-year-old cousin that eventually found her a mile away from their home, sitting on a tree trunk. Little Ana Vitoria Soares Cardosa survived without any adult supervision and without care for five days because of her reliance on tropical fruits and stream water. When she was found, she wasn’t able to walk and was dehydrated but has since been treated at a local hospital.

Meanwhile, her family is relieved that she was found alive and the rest of us have questions about how a 4-year-old passed the days and nights lost in a jungle without another human being nearby.

Officials say that Ana Vitoria Soares Cardosa is lucky to have been found alive.

Fire Chief Rosivaldo Andrede told local media that the young girl “went through tremendous difficulty.” She had to survive the elements — cold exposure at night, insects and parasites, infected scrapes and bruises, contaminated water, and finding means to nourish herself all on her own. “There were no dangerous animals in the area to attack, but this does not change the risk the forest poses, from cutting yourself, tripping, scrapes, the risk of the water, the cold, infections,” Andrede told reporters. 

Fire Chief Andrede had initially sent search and rescue to scour the river for her body.

“From December 30 to January 1 we searched without resting on the river, where the child’s body could be. The information given by her relatives made us believe that she could have died and that she could have not gone to the forest,” Andrede told local reporters. That’s because she was last seen in a canoe with her 8-year-old sister. She went missing soon after, prompting the family to believe the worst. Little Soares Cardosa doesn’t know how to swim. On December 29, the day she went missing, her family called emergency services. Soares Cardosa is one of nine children who live in the Rio Maniva community, a rural part of northern Brazil.

Thankfully, their worst fears were not realized. Instead of finding the drowned body of the young girl, she was found alive and well, considering the circumstances.

Soares Cardosa was found sitting on a tree trunk, unable to walk, on Jan. 2.

Her 8-year-old cousin was walking through the nearby rainforest when she found the young girl, covered in scrapes and bruises, sitting on a trunk. The girl’s mother, Rosilete de Souza Soares, told reporters, “She was sitting on a trunk, but she was unable to walk. A cousin found her.” She also added that her resilient daughter survived by “eating fruit and drinking from a stream.” While the rest of us drop hundreds of dollars at REI to purchase all the necessary equipment to comfortably survive in the backcountry, conduct extensive research on which water filter is the best and most lightweight, this young girl only had her basic survival instincts to live off of. 

The entire story has folks both marveling at the human instinct to survive that lives within each of us, even from as young an age as 4-years-old, and lamenting that this young girl was without any human contact, comfort or care for five days, let alone in the wild. 

The girl didn’t sustain any major injuries and was only treated for dehydration at the hospital.

The world continues to be in shock and awe that this young girl managed to survive for as long as she did without any major injuries. There are no reports as to why she was unable to walk at the time that she was found, but we imagine exhaustion would be perfectly reasonable. 

The young girl is still recovering in their neighboring state, Amapa, in a local hospital in the town of Santana. She’s expected to make a full recovery and has been photographed playing with a variety of balloons with a bandage going from her forearm up to her right bicep.

READ: Grandfather Of Toddler Who Fell To Her Death From A Cruise Ship Window Has Been Charged With Homicide

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