DETAINED in Arizona: Four Student Immigrant Leaders

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Media Contacts: Juan (407) 602-8675, Flavia de la Fuente (949) 910-6362 media@thedreamiscoming.com

DETAINED in Arizona: Four Student Immigrant Leaders

Peacefully Resist Current Immigration Law, Urge Passage of DREAM Act

As of 6:00 PM PST today, Mohammad, Yahaira, Lizbeth and Raul, an Arizona Resident, have been arrested and detained after their day long sit-in at Senator John McCains Office in Tucson, AZ. Tania, who was not detained, has been designated as spokesperson and will be relating the experiences/thoughts of the group during the action.

Senator John McCain offered the students a meeting in order to discuss the Dream Act, however, the students recognize that this is insufficient and that immediate action is needed to pass the DREAM Act!

Tucson, Arizona. May 17th, on the anniversary of landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education, Arizona law enforcement arrested four undocumented leaders of the immigrant student movement in addition to Arizona native Raul Alcaraz. Lizbeth Mateo of Los Angeles, California; Tania Unzueta of Chicago, Illinois; Mohammad Abdollahi of Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Yahaira Carrillo of Kansas City, Missouri; were detained Tucson, Arizona, after staging a sit-in at Senator John McCain’s office. With this challenge to local and federal law, these youth hope to highlight the urgency of legislative action in Congress, and catalyze mass grassroots mobilization to pass the DREAM Act before June 15th.

These four leaders are risking deportation from the United States in the hope that this action will make a significant contribution to the fight for immigrant rights. In response to the onslaught of enforcement-based immigration law, they staged a sit-in at Senator McCain’s office, and urged congressional leadership to champion the DREAM Act and the values it represents: hard work, education, and fairness.

Lizbeth, 25, an organizer with DREAM Team Los Angeles, states, “There are already ten other states across the country considering immigration legislation similar to Arizona’s: legislation that is anti-family, anti-democratic, and anti-freedom. Police states and enforcement are quickly becoming the standard, and we are running out of time. We are going to pass the DREAM Act because it is based on freedom and equality.”

Mohammad, 24, co-founder of DreamActivist.Org, a resource web portal for undocumented students, said in a statement: “Never in our history has it been American to deny people their civil rights. We have decided to peacefully resist to encourage our leaders to pass the DREAM Act and create a new standard for immigration reform based on education, hard work, equality, and fairness.”

At least 65,000 undocumented immigrant youth graduate from high schools every year, and many of them struggle to attend institutes of higher education and the military. The DREAM Act will grant youth who traveled to the United States before the age of 16 a path to citizenship contingent on continuous presence in the country, good behavior, and the attainment of at least a two-year university degree or a two-year commitment to the armed forces.

“During the civil rights movement, African-American students were arrested for sitting down at lunch counters. We’ve been detained for standing on a sidewalk. We can’t wait any longer for the DREAM Act to pass,” said Tania, 26, co-founder of the Immigrant Youth Justice League, and immigrant rights organizer in Chicago.

All four are leaders in their own communities and have dedicated years to work for immigrant rights, legalization for undocumented immigrants, and the DREAM Act. “Dr. King spoke of a dream of equality overcoming fear. Well, the fierce urgency of our dreams has overcome any kind of fear we may have had before. We can’t wait,” concluded Yahaira, 25, a founder of the Kansas Missouri Dream Alliance.

Project by: Dream Team LA, ONE Michigan, Kansas Missouri Dream Alliance, and Immigrant Youth Justice League, coordinated by DREAMActivist.org. For more information, please visit www.thedreamiscoming.com

Read about the DREAM Act 5 below:

Lizbeth Mateo

I came to this country when I had just turned fourteen. I carried with me few things: the memories of friends and loved ones left behind and a few personal dreams and ambitions. I relied on one phrase: “Sorry, I don’t speak English.” After weeks of crying myself to sleep, I found myself surrounded by new friends and teachers who welcomed me and believed in my abilities. After four years of hard work, I became the first person in my family to graduate from high school, yet it was a bittersweet accomplishment. After high school graduation, I had to choose between pursuing college in Mexico and fighting for a future in the United States. I’m American. I stayed to fight.

I paid my way through college without any financial aid, working at a sunglass store on the beach as my friends enjoyed their vacations.

Years later, I am the first in my family to graduate from college. I dream of being a lawyer one day, and defending the causes of liberty and justice in this country before the Supreme Court. All of this, and more, is possible if we can pass the DREAM Act together. Join us.

• Graduate of California State University of Northridge, B.A. in Chican@ Studies
• Founding member of Dreams To Be Heard, a support and advocacy group at California State University of Northridge
• Co-­‐founder of Dream Team Los Angeles, a youth-­‐led organization of students, educators, and community members seeking to empower immigrant youth
• Testified at the California state capitol on the barriers faced by undocumented youth
• Testified in Congress on the urgent need for the DREAM Act

Follow Lizbeth!
Facebook: Lizbeth Mateo
Twitter: @lizbethmateo
Country of Origin: Mexico
Current City: Los Angeles
Age: 25

My name is Mo Abdollahi, and I am an undocumented immigrant.

I have known for a long time that I am undocumented. I have also known, for a long time, that I cannot return to Iran, the country of my birth. There are many reasons for this- the most important of which is because America is my home- but one major reason is because I am gay. In Iran, capital punishment is the penalty for homosexuality.

After high school I worked to save enough money to pay out-of-state tuition. When I had enough community college credits to transfer, I applied to Eastern Michigan
University. I sat in the counselor’s office, handed him my transcript, and he told me, “Mohammad, you are the kind of student we want at this university.” He then handed me an acceptance letter. I was in.

I looked at this letter and thought of my mother. With this piece of paper, I could go to my mother and tell her that she didn’t have to stay up late crying anymore, that she didn’t have to blame herself anymore, that she hadn’t done her children wrong by bringing them to this country. I could tell her it was all worth it. Then, the counselor brought back his supervisor, who told me that they could not accept me because I “needed to be in a line to get in”. The counselor then reached over his desk and took my acceptance letter from me.

I left. My future was being held hostage. A short time later, the DREAM Act came up for a vote in the senate, and 44 other people decided that they too were going to hold my future hostage. Three years later, my future and many others are still being held hostage as we fight to pass the DREAM Act. Join us.

• Graduate of Washtenaw College, Associate’s Degree, Health and Human Services
• Co-­‐Founder, www.DREAMActivist.org
• Co-­‐Founder, ONEMichigan, coalition of Michigan organizations

Follow Mo!
Facebook: Mohammad Abdollahi
Twitter: @midreamact
Country of Origin: Iran
Current City: Ann Arbor
Age: 24

My name is Tania Unzueta and I am an undocumented immigrant.

I have lived in Chicago since I was 10 years old. I came with my mother to join my father, who had found a stable job and a promise to legalize his status. Eventually our tourist visas ran out, and my family became undocumented.

For years we lived in a small basement, then a small apartment. When we moved here, my dad had been offered a job with the promise of regularizing his status through employer sponsorship, 245-i. Our family was going through that process when the workers began to organize a union, and asked for the support of my dad. He gave it to them, which resulted in his dismissal from his position, and an end to the sponsorship.

I too have tried and failed to regularize my immigration status. When I graduated from high school I went to Mexico to try to apply for an international student visa, so that I could attend the colleges to which I had been accepted. Even though I was the captain of my swim team and an honors student, my visa was not accepted. Eventually I was able to get a humanitarian visa to come back to Chicago. I pinned a lot of hopes for my future on the 2003 DREAM Act. It failed. I hoped again in 2007- to the same result. Ever since then I have only tried to do the best I can with my life, trying to have a balance between being happy, giving back to my community, and working for the passage of the DREAM Act. Join us.

• Co- ‐founder, Chicago- ‐based Immigrant Youth Justice League
• Organizer, U.S. Social Forum
• Graduate, UIC, B.A. Sociology, Minor in Gender and Women’s studies

Follow Tania!
Facebook: Tania Unzueta
Twitter: @ilehlainat
Country of Origin: Mexico
Current City: Chicago
Age: 26

My name is Yahaira Carrillo, and I am an undocumented immigrant.

I didn’t know what were doing, where we were going or why I had to crawl under a fence, but I did.. It was southern California, 1993, and I was eight years old; my mother and I were going to reunite with my father.

I was born in 1985 to a barely-turned 16 year-
old who had been kicked out of her house while she was pregnant for being a disgrace to the family. I lived with my mother in an abandoned house in Guerrero, Mexico. She struggled to find work, but was either harassed or asked for sexual favors. She said no. She was 17 in 1986 when the 8.1 magnitude earthquake hit Mexico. She decided to take me to the US, but we didn’t stay that long. At my grandmother’s request, we returned to Mexico. The hits kept coming: my mother ended an abusive relationship with a military man and feared for her life.

Then, my father called- after abandoning my mother while she was pregnant and being MIA for most of my early years, decided he wanted us to join him in California. My options have always been limited. When I was 14, my 18-year-old boyfriend wanted to marry me. I said no. When I graduated from the top of my high school class, I thought I couldn’t go anywhere. My parents were migrant farm workers- college wasn’t likely. But years later, I found a private college in Kansas that would accept me. I worked myself to the bone, and obtained an Associate’s Degree. Today, I am working towards my Bachelor’s degree. According to my calculations, it will take me eight years.

I’ve had people tell me that it’s not a big deal, that I should keep on waiting for the DREAM Act to pass. My life has been on pause, rewind or replay for years. Waiting is not an option. Join us.

• Graduate of Donnelly College, Associate’s Degree
• Currently attending Rockhurst University
• Founder of the Kansas Missouri Dream Alliance

Follow Yahaira!
Facebook: Yahaira Carrillo
Twitter: @ycarrillo4
Country of Origin: Mexico
Current City: Kansas City