West Valley teen facing deportation a poster boy for immigration reform

Aaron Vaughn, Web Content Producer

FOX 13 News

10:00 p.m. MST, January 20, 2011

WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah — While David Morales, 18, was on a bus to attend bible school, he was stopped by customs agents and was arrested for residing in the U.S. illegally. Some would say this is perfectly fine according to law, but many opponents say that Morales is the poster boy for what is wrong with immigration law.

David's family came to Utah illegally when he was 9-years-old. Morales considers himself a Utahn and an American citizen. But now as customs agents hold him in a Louisiana jail cell, they say that he is to be deported to Mexico.

Morales had immersed himself in his community and his church. Morales was a keynote speaker at Granite Peaks High graduation last spring and he wanted to go on and become a missionary for his church. His family says all he knows in life is what he has in Utah and that he does not have anywhere to go in a country he is unfamiliar with.

Under federal law, Morales is simply an illegal immigrant. So when Immigration Customs Enforcement conducted a random check of the Greyhound bus taking him to bible school in Louisiana, Morales was arrested and slated for deportation to Mexico.

"The thing that is saddest, is not that he is remarkable or unique, is that he is exactly like all the others," says University of Houston law professor, Michael Olivas. Olivas is considered an expert in immigration law and had recently delivered the key note speech at a University of Utah Martin Luther King Jr. day event.

"And these children who've achieved by any kind of ground rules we've ever set for them to have them deported because they were on their way to divinity school, is just tragic," Olivas says.

As of Thursday afternoon the Morales family is working with officials in Louisiana trying to get him out of jail so he can come back home and get his affairs in order. They intend to do what is called a self-deportation.

The family hopes someone intervenes politically to allow David Morales stay at home in Utah.

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