Colorlines » How Undocumented Youth Nearly Made Their DREAMs Real in 2010:
“Activists like Saavedra and Lopez didn’t just have the year’s profound anti-immigrant fervor to confront. They also met real resistance from many Beltway immigration reform advocates who for years have been dedicated to a “comprehensive” reform strategy. The prevailing wisdom among key legislators—and now in the Obama administration—has long been that if supporters give away the easiest pieces of immigration reform—stuff like the DREAM Act, which benefits a sympathetic group of undocumented immigrants—it’ll be much harder to open citizenship avenues for the remaining millions of undocumented immigrants in the country.
At the year’s outset, that strategy remained ascendant on Capitol Hill, despite the fact that it seemed a long shot that Congress would take up a comprehensive bill any time soon. President Obama threw the immigrant community an infamous 38 measly words in his State of the Union speech. And May 1—an unofficial deadline immigrant rights advocates had set for Obama to deliver reform—came and went with little action. […]
So DREAMers set about wrestling the DREAM Act away from the comprehensive framework.
On May 18, four undocumented youth—Tania Unzueta, Lizbeth Mateo, Yahaira Carrillo and Mohammad Abdollahi—and one ally—Raúl Alcaraz, a resident with papers—became the first DREAMers to risk arrest and deportation for the bill when they staged a sit-in at Arizona Sen. John McCain’s Tucson offices. “We were asking McCain to come back around again for the DREAM Act, to support the rights of undocumented youth,” said Abdollahi. McCain cosponsored previous versions of the DREAM Act. He didn’t budge that day, but neither did the DREAMers.
They were arrested and charged with a misdemeanor, criminal trespass. Their actions triggered deportation proceedings.
“The calculated risk is that I could have technically been detained driving or doing anything,” said Abdollahi, who lives in Michigan and is a cofounder of DreamActivist.org. “But ICE and immigration organizations can’t think they can hold our status over our heads. We are taking ownership of the same fears that are going to exist no matter what.”
So far, the gamble has paid off.”
