Demonstration at Arizona Border Divides Supporters of Immigration Overhaul
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Version 0 of 1. A protest by nine Mexican immigrants in which they tried to enter the country through a border station in Arizona even though they had no valid documents has provoked an unusual public argument among groups pushing Congress to overhaul the immigration laws. Most of the nine are young people who grew up in the United States without legal status. On July 22, they approached the border crossing in Nogales and asked to be admitted on a special parole. Border officers detained them for deportation, and they are being held in a detention center in Eloy, Ariz. The most heated part of the debate centers on the high-risk move by three undocumented youths in the group, who left the United States shortly before the protest, knowing they had no legal visas to return. The six others had been deported or had left the country on their own some time ago. Some advocates and lawmakers praised the immigrants, who are calling themselves the Dream 9, for their bold civil disobedience in the tradition of the civil rights era. Others said their tactics were reckless and distracted from the fight in Washington to win a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants living illegally in the country. Representative Michael M. Honda, Democrat of California, sent a letter signed by 32 other House members calling on President Obama to allow the immigrants to stay, saying they had taken a “courageous step because they are fighting to reunite families separated by the border and mass deportation policies.” Mr. Honda said the nine were “victims of our broken immigration policies, and they deserve to come home to the United States.” There have been small rallies and vigils in support of the immigrants in at least half a dozen places. But DeeDee Garcia Blase, a leader in Arizona of the Tequila Party, an organization of Latinas working for the immigration overhaul, said the protesters should keep their focus on passing legislation that would allow unauthorized immigrants to stay on this side of the border. “It’s counterproductive to be defiant and leave our nation and put themselves at risk,” Ms. Garcia Blase said. “It’s our position,” said Mohammad Abdollahi, a leader of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, which organized the protest, “that all these folks should be allowed to come home.” He said the three young people who recently went to Mexico had gone to accompany the other six as they tried to get back into the United States. “It was purely civil disobedience,” Mr. Abdollahi said. “We wanted everybody to be treated the same.” A lawyer representing the nine immigrants, Margo Cowan, said they had asked to enter on a humanitarian parole, a special permission generally granted in short-term personal emergencies. To reinforce their case, they also requested asylum. Immigration officials and lawyers said it would be difficult under current law for the Obama administration to give them a break. One of the protesters, Claudia Amaro, is 37, too old to be eligible even for the deportation reprieves that the administration has offered since last year. Ms. Amaro had been living here illegally since 1988, and her teenage son is an American citizen. She was arrested in 2005 at her home in Wichita, Kan., with her husband, who was under police investigation, immigration officials said. She was released and left for Mexico, but a court order for her deportation was filed in her absence. Another Mexican, Luis León, who is 20, grew up in North Carolina but left in 2011 to go to college in Mexico. In a phone call on Thursday from the detention center, Mr. León said he soon began to miss his family. He was caught and deported four times trying to cross the border illegally. In most cases, foreigners who are deported cannot return to the United States for at least 10 years. Mr. León said that the Nogales attempt was his last resort, and that he had told the protest’s organizers, “I would do whatever it takes to get back to my family.” Mr. León said he did not mind being detained because he was holding out hope that he might be released. “I’m really looking forward to having all my friends over, like I used to back when I was in high school,” Mr. León said. “I hope everything goes back the way it used to be, being with my family and being able to talk to my community again.” Among the three who left the United States shortly before the protest, Lulu Martínez, 23, had applied for a deportation reprieve. By leaving the United States, officials said, she became ineligible for it. Lizbeth Mateo, 29, was due to start law school in California in mid-August, organizers said. The third protester was Marco Saavedra, 23. Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Friday that the immigrants were interviewed last week and officials expected to decide their cases in coming days. Ms. Cowan, a lawyer in the Pima County Public Defender’s Office, said she argued that they should be allowed to stay “in the public interest.” “These are not deportees,” she said. “They are persons who find themselves outside the United States but belong here.” Other lawyers questioned that argument. “Once you depart the U.S., all bets are off,” said David Leopold, a lawyer and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “To suggest that anyone should be able to walk out of the U.S. and turn around and knock on the door and come back in, I don’t know anybody who thinks that we ought to have an open border,” Mr. Leopold said. The immigrants take their name from the Dream Act, legislation that would open a special path to citizenship for young people here illegally. A version of it was included in a bill that the Senate passed in June, and House Republicans are also weighing a measure to help young immigrants. Stephen A. Nuño, a professor of political science at Northern Arizona University, was blunt. “You’re making it much harder for Congress to give you a pathway to citizenship when you gamble,” he said. <NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>Julia Preston reported from New York, and Rebekah Zemansky from Phoenix. |