The AP is reporting on developments in Lebanon, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville, where a family court judge ordered a Mexican immigrant mother to learn English at risk of losing her child (excerpt):
[Felipa Barrera] said she loves her daughter and denies hitting her. Her attorneys say their client would not even be in court if she were not a poor immigrant, one who speaks only an indigenous Mexican language, Mixteco. Many Mixteco-speaking immigrants remain isolated when they reach the United States because they don’t speak Spanish or English.
“A lot of courts and hospitals don’t realize just because someone is from Mexico, it doesn’t necessarily mean they know Spanish,” said Konane Martinez, an anthropologist at the National Latino Research Center at Cal State San Marcos. “It’s a completely different language.”