Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported 20-year-old Sandra Lopez to Nogales, Sonora on March 9. She was brought to the U.S. when she was just two weeks old and she doesn’t know anyone in Mexico. Sandra spent five days on the streets of Nogales and then ran for her life up through the lanes of traffic at the border and crossed back into the U.S. She was arrested and taken into federal custody, and applied for asylum. She is now at risk of being deported again.
I attended a press conference at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson on September 29 to call on the Obama administration to halt the detention and deportation of Sandra. I was able to speak with her mother and father, and I told them I would spread the word about her case.
The No More Deaths organization launched a national campaign for Sandra on July 25. More than 5,000 e-mails, faxes and phone calls have been made to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. Please add your voice to the campaign by going to http://www.nomoredeaths.org/Updates-and-Announcements/stop-sandras-deportation.html to send a message.
Sandra graduated from high school in Tucson in 2009 and wanted to enroll in Pima Community College. She was told that she would have to pay out-of-state tuition because she doesn’t have immigration documents. Her family couldn’t afford that and she began working with her mother cleaning homes.
She ran into a friend from high school in September 2010, and he asked her to mail a box for him and gave her $100. Sandra had never sent anything from FedEx before and it cost $85 for the package. She kept the remaining $15 and it turned out that the package contained marijuana.
Sandra plead guilty to “securing the proceeds of an offense” on February 8, 2011 and was placed on three years probation. She was then transferred to ICE and placed in the Eloy Detention Center – a 1,500 bed facility owned and operated by the Corrections Corporation of America.
She appeared before an immigration judge on March 9 and was told there was no possibility of relief for her case. She became very distraught, started crying and signed a form that she did not understand which caused her to be deported to Nogales that night.
“Strange men began to ask me to come with them,” wrote Sandra in her application for asylum. “I had a little bit of money so I went to a hotel right by the border and got a room. I saw men bringing girls a lot younger than me there and the girls looked really scared. At night I could hear them scream. I left the next morning. I was really scared. Several women met me outside and told me to come with them. They told me they kept girls like me and gave them jobs. I know they wanted me to be a sex worker for them.”
“I asked policemen for help but they would not help me. They also tried to get me to go with them and I knew I would be raped. I lived on the street for five days and nights - just running and hiding. I was so scared I ran for my life up through the lanes of traffic back into the United States.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on August 18 that it would “execute a case-by-case review of all individuals in removal [deportation] proceedings to ensure that they constitute our highest priorities.” DHS also stated, “It makes no sense to expend our enforcement resources on low-priority cases such as individuals who were brought to this country as young children and know no other home.” Sandra’s case offers the Obama administration an opportunity to show that this is a change we can believe in.
Photos of Sandra’s mother and father during the press conference:
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