ICE deporting wrong people?
Up in San Antonio, Customs and Border Protection agents took a 47-year-old El Salvadorian into custody last Thursday for allegedly entering the U.S. illegally. He was previously deported in 2023 and had a lengthy criminal record dating back more than 20 years, which included minor crimes like assault, DWI, coke possession, forgery, and firing a weapon. (Source: NEWS4SA.) The fact that he was being deported wouldn’t surprise most people.
In Georgia, though, what ICE agents recently did to a female college freshman will make most people shake their heads in collective wonder over the injustice. Presumably this will include those who agree, in general principle, to Trump’s border agenda, which includes deporting violent criminals.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is defending detainment of said college student, 19-year-old Ximena Arias-Cristobal.
If you haven’t heard about this bit of news, here it is. See what you think. Granted, it’s not a story based in the Rio Grande Valley, but how many teens exactly like her are living here now? A lot, presumably.
A good babysittter
By all accounts, Arias-Cristobal is the kind of young woman you’d want in your community. She graduated high school, enrolled in college, and then watched as her world fell apart May 5.
She came to the U.S. from Mexico City with her parents, illegally, in 2010 at the age of 4. She’s been here ever since. According to numerous news reports citing a family attorney working the case pro bono, the dad has tried over the years to find a route to citizenship or a legit work visa but has failed at every turn. Despite that, he reportedly owns his own construction company and pays taxes.
Now, says the attorney, the daughter is paying the price for the dad’s inability to gain citizenship.
The dad just got out of ICE custody after getting stopped by police a few weeks ago for driving 19 mph over the speed limit. Like his daughter, he now also faces deportation.
“The problem with this administration's policy with immigration is it doesn't differentiate between hardened criminals and innocent people who get caught up in the mix,” the family attorney told Atlanta’s FOX 5 last week.
Two weeks ago, the 19-year-old was driving through Dalton, Ga., approximately 90 miles north of Atlanta, without a DL, when a cop mistook her car for one like it that had just made an illegal turn. (He lost the real car in traffic.)
Police later said, yeah, they were wrong to stop her for the red light, it was another driver, but now she had bigger problems on her hands — ICE had her in its sites for being in this country illegally.
It was that traffic stop that landed Arias Cristobal in the Whitfield County jail, where she was detained by ICE. The county is one of hundreds of jurisdictions that have agreements to cooperate with ICE by turning over noncitizen detainees. (Source: cbsnews.com.) Presumably, someone at the county jail asked about her immigration status, then phoned ICE.
Deportation Awaits?
DHS, which oversees ICE, now says it plans to deport her back to Mexico. She has her first detention hearing this Tuesday, as this is being written.
Even if she does still have relatives in Mexico City, doubtful she knows the city/country well, and besides that, she’s been living in the U.S. since before starting kindergarten.
“My life is here, and I’m scared I’m going to have to start all over again in a country that I don’t know,” Arias-Cristobal said over a phone call from inside the ICE detention center in Georgia where she is being held. (Source: cbsnews.com.)
Her story just hit the national news last week, and already a GoFundMe account has been set up in her name. By the mom for whom she worked as a long-time babysitter.
Feel free to contribute. Just type her name — Ximena Arias-Cristobal — into a search engine, along with GoFundMe. You’ll find a link. Going directly to the Go page and typing in her name doesn’t work for some reason.
The money will be used to battle her case, but DHS/ICE has her dead to rights — she’s here illegally. The caveat to that, though, for many people, will be, yeah, but is deporting her really the just, merciful, right thing to do?
If she were part of a drug gang, okay, abused kids, set colleges on fire, one can make the argument much easier, yes, deport her. But this young woman, by all accounts, is a model citizen.
Don’t we need more of those, not fewer?
Like the woman for whom she babysits wrote on the GoFundMe page she started (the mom), just to try and help out:
“She has babysat for my kids for years. We adore her. Ximena is my close friend and my children’s favorite babysitter.”
By the way, Arias-Cristobal doesn’t qualify for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) because she would have needed to come to the U.S. prior to June 15, 2007, not 2010.
Common Sense Needed
Over the past 40-plus years, make it 50, the same politicians who have helped shutter American factories, start wars in foreign lands, funnel money to their largest campaign contributors, etc., etc., etc., are also the same failed lot who haven’t managed to develop a common-sense path to citizenship for the people who have lived in this country for years and followed all the laws. Gone to school. Started a business.
No doubt, those include people who work in these politicians’ homes, cut their grass, pick their crops, change their babies’, grandbabies’ diapers, all paid with cash, of course.
Which is why, in part, that people like Ximena Arias-Cristobal are now in a tough spot. Actually, “tough” isn’t a tough enough adjective to describe her current plight – getting deported out of the country she has called home from the age of 4, already enrolled in college.
Best of luck to her, in all sincerity because from where I see it, this isn’t right.
I think what the Trump Administration needs is a Common Sense Czar, you know, just to run some simple stuff by that any halfwit could fathom.
To the Common Sense Czar, I would ask:
Do you think it’s right to deport this teen back to Mexico, given her life story, personal history?
Anyone with common sense, not to mention a dose of compassion, would say, no.
Then I’d tell the president, you know, from a public relations standpoint, this deportation will cost you political capital, so why do it?
“He doesn’t need to run for office again, so who needs political capital?”
Yeah, but he needs Congress to back his agenda, and if he loses favor with the electorate, that’s not going to happen, and the tariff business is still a big question mark with regard to price increases.
Meanwhile, the DHS director, ICE Barbie, Kristi Noem, the woman who once admitted to shooting and killing her hunting dog because the damn dog wouldn’t hunt right (true story, look it up) wants a new multi-million-dollar government jet in this age of cost savings.
Fifty million bucks, although I’m not sure it’s a done deal, but that’s what she is requesting — a Gulfstream G-V with the newest bells and whistles.
Now, I’d bet money that the current jet, or fleet, at her disposal is perfectly fine, and the only reason she wants one is for the newest creature comforts. Government planes are maintained well and can fly forever. Just overhaul the engines when they’re due for overhaul, upgrade the avionics package, do the 100-hour inspections on time, and it’s a lot cheaper than $50 million. You know, in this age when the feds are doing everything they can to possibly cut government waste.
That’s what they tell us.
On one hand, it’s a fact, the border needed securing, which Trump and ICE have done.
On the other hand, something needs to be done for the people who have been living in the U.S. for years, kept out of trouble, worked, contributed to the system, paid taxes, not sucked off the public teat as it were.
You know, people like 19-year-old Ximena Arias-Cristobal.
In the RGV, people like her need to come up with a game plan, because if they’re here illegally, and they get stopped for a traffic violation, even if it turns out to be BS, by then ICE will presumably already have them in detention.
I can’t think getting sent out of the U.S. involuntarily, after living here all their life, is a place anyone wants to be.
So what to do?
Contact an attorney, even though I don’t think at this point in time, there’s anything anyone can do if they fit the same profile as Ximena Arias-Cristobal.
Whatever people do, though, it’s better if they do it on their own terms before anyone gets detained by ICE. Because by then, you are…