Thread: ICE detains ‘Dreamer’ after she urged Trump to protect her

Daniela Vargas, whose father and brother were picked up during a recent immigration raid of undocumented immigrants listens as speakers discuss the series of raids that also picked up other undocumented immigrants across the state during a news conference at ...

By Sarah Smith - Associated Press - Wednesday, March 1, 2017

JACKSON, Miss. — A young woman in the process of renewing her permission as a “Dreamer” to remain in the United States legally was arrested Wednesday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after speaking at a press conference where she urged President Donald Trump to protect people like her. Now two Democratic senators want answers.

Daniela Vargas, 22, was detained by ICE agents who pulled over a friend’s car on a nearby freeway after she left a coalition of clergy members, civil rights lawyers and other advocates for immigrants at Jackson City Hall, according to one of her lawyers, Nathan Elmore.

“A path for citizenship is necessary for DACA recipients but also for the other 11 million undocumented people with dreams,” she said, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Barack Obama began and which Trump has suggested he’ll continue.

Reading notes from index cards, she recounted watching ICE agents take away her father and brother, both Argentines like her who have been in the country illegally. “I was scared for my life,” she said.

Vargas‘ latest DACA status had expired in November 2016, and she applied to renew it mid-February, after she came up with the $495 application fee. She had been granted the two-year protection twice before, in December 2012 and in November 2014, said Abigail Peterson, another of her attorneys.

Vargas was 7 when her parents brought her from Argentina. She graduated high school in 2013, attended community college and started at the University of Southern Mississippi, aspiring to be a math professor.

Detaining someone with a pending DACA application has been “very unusual,” Peterson said.

“Why they would move forward the way they have is, honestly, mind-boggling,” she said.

ICE spokesman Thomas Byrd said in a statement that Vargas was taken into custody in a “targeted immigration enforcement action” after the agency verified that her DACA status had lapsed. A federal immigration judge will now “decide whether or not she is eligible for immigration relief,” the statement said.

Asked for more details by The Associated Press, Byrd couldn’t say whether agents knew she had reapplied or if this means other immigrants with pending applications are at risk of detention.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, said he’s seeking information about her case from the Department of Homeland Security. “Disturbing that ICE may have followed her from an immigration press conference,” he tweeted.

“Talking publicly about fears of deportation is not a crime and should not get someone detained #ICEraids,” tweeted Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California.

Vargas‘ lawyers expect she will be detained in Louisiana, where they will try to get her released on her own recognizance.

They said they don’t know where her father and brother are being held but believe they have not yet been deported.

“I don’t think anybody around her realized the risk that was involved,” said Angela Stuesse (STEE-see), a family friend and anthropology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “She wanted to share what she had been through to help the community there.”

“She’s Mississippian by heart,” Stuesse added. “She doesn’t see a future for herself in Argentina.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...rant-detained/

The whole family needs to be deported back to Argentina. They should have never come here. Mississippi has so many poor Americans who need our attention. Mississippi is a beautiful state but still plagued with enormous poverty. They needs jobs for Americans, college seats for Americans, great jobs for Americans, and yes, many black Americans in Mississippi, not people from Argentina or anywhere else for that matter.

Good, good, good!

Get them all out!

If it was so important for you to follow the laws and remain hear, then why did you not renew last year in November as required?

Oh, I know...... because illegal aliens think you are above the law and have gotten away with your lawlessness for years but suddenly
you see Trump means business and you rush to do your paperwork.

Too late...... and you walked right into it!

Correct! That is really a strange short haircut, isn't it?

indeed it is. She looks like a he.

It really does! Strange.