{"id":792,"date":"2011-08-17T14:19:54","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T18:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=792"},"modified":"2011-08-17T14:28:55","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T18:28:55","slug":"who-decides-which-undocumented-students-can-stay-who-must-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2011\/08\/17\/who-decides-which-undocumented-students-can-stay-who-must-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Decides Which Undocumented Students Can Stay, Who Must Go?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>

Provided by Melissa. <\/p>

Melissa, 18, fled gang violence in her native Honduras when she was 7-years-old. Because she has attended U.S. schools and has no criminal record, her deportation has been deferred for one year.<\/p><\/div>\n

When a local immigration field office in northern Florida tried to deport an 18-year-old girl in Quincy, Fla. a powerful South Florida advocate intervened.<\/p>\n

Advocates on both sides of the immigration debate say that a lack of clear federal law on how to treat undocumented students leaves the process open to influence peddling.<\/p>\n

President Obama gave local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices authority to choose which undocumented students can stay and who must go when Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act\u2014a law that would allow some undocumented school-aged kids to stay in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Goals And Dreams Are From Here\u201d<\/strong>
\n<\/p>\n

Melissa fled gang violence in El Progresso, Honduras with the help of smugglers. She was just 7-years-old when she arrived in north Florida to live with her mom and two younger sisters.<\/p>\n

She is the only person in her family without legal status. And when she was 12-years-old, Melissa was caught in an immigration raid while visiting her aunt in Tallahassee.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou hear the door just closing and 10 officers come in with their things that say ICE and their guns to the side saying, ‘We are from the Department of Homeland Security. We’ve come to see whose illegal and not.’<\/p>\n

Melissa has been fighting a political asylum case since the day of the raid.<\/p>\n

Melissa is not her real name. Her identity is being protected because it could affect her case. Earlier this year, after a six year battle, Melissa lost her final immigration court appeal.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeportation is like depression. It\u2019s like they tell you you’re going to die tomorrow,\u201d Melissa said.<\/p>\n

The deportation letter said she could take 40 pounds of luggage back to Honduras.<\/p>\n

Officials call it a \u201cBag and Baggage\u201d letter. Melissa calls it a death sentence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have no type of life in Honduras. What could Honduras offer me? Nothing but just violence,\u201d she said. \u201cMy goals and dreams are from here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melissa had one final option.<\/p>\n

Undocumented Students Apply To Stay <\/strong><\/p>\n

Because she had attended a U.S. high school and had no criminal record, the Obama administration said she could apply to put off her deportation.<\/p>\n

\n

“You can imagine that different ICE officers will use different discretion given the same set of facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

-Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez<\/h6>\n<\/div>\n

But the local immigration office wouldn\u2019t approve the request. A supervisor in Orlando told Melissa\u2019s attorney, Wendi Adelson, that she needed to file an amendment to the request with a compelling reason to keep Melissa in the country short term.<\/p>\n

Adelson was out of options.<\/p>\n

So she decided to circumvent the process.<\/p>\n

Adelson called Cheryl Little, the influential head of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami. And Little began to pull strings in Washington D.C.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know when you\u2019re desperately trying to help someone and you\u2019re getting \u201cNo\u201d from the local officials, I don’t think it hurts to try to take it further up,\u201d said Little.<\/p>\n

A few days later, the same officer whose name was on the initial deportation letter called Adelson to say Melissa could stay in the country for another year.<\/p>\n

Adelson and Little say\u00a0they are\u00a0happy to have bought Melissa\u00a0more time\u00a0in the country. But they say the process seems flawed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea that, instead of following the rules and crossing your Ts and dotting your Is, you have to go above the decision makers and have them talk to the next level of people and have them decide for your client, I mean it\u2019s not justice,\u201d said Adelson.<\/p>\n

Bob Dane is with the Federation for American Immigration Reform. He says, \u201cThis is the chaos that happens when the administration begins re-write immigration rules for political expediency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dane sits on the opposite side of the immigration debate as advocates like Adelson and Little.<\/p>\n

Local Immigration Agents Decide<\/strong><\/p>\n

ICE has issued guidelines for local agents to follow. But the decision to grant deferred action or prosecutorial discretion to a student facing deportation is discretionary.<\/p>\n

\n

“The only thing that I thought is why do they keep denying this? Why do I have to go?\u201d<\/p>\n

-Melissa, 18-years-old<\/h6>\n<\/div>\n

Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez is leading an effort in Congress to change that.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can imagine that different ICE officers will use different discretion given the same set of facts. Do I think that\u2019s happening? Yes. Should it be happening? No.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gutierrez wants to take the discretion away from local immigration agents. He says students without access to an attorney or the right advocates are slipping through the cracks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy aren’t we having as a general policy, simply stating, \u201cthere\u2019s a million of you, if your story is similar or identical to the story of the 12 we already deferred action on, we\u2019re not going to deport you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melissa says this confusing process, the back and forth, the last-minute deferrals, the constant threat of deportation, are hard emotionally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing that I thought is why do they keep denying this? Why do I have to go? But now I just see it as a process I have to go through and just hang in there,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Melissa can choose to go to college or join the military. But with her future so uncertain, she says it’s hard to decide.<\/p>\n

A year from now, she’ll find out if her deportation will be deferred another year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When a local immigration field office in northern Florida tried to deport an 18-year-old girl in Quincy, Fla. a powerful South Florida advocate intervened. Advocates on both sides of the immigration debate say that a lack of clear federal law on how to treat undocumented students leaves the process open to influence peddling. President Obama […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[1053,1033,1034],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions\/837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}