ALIPAC mentioned in this article
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Case by case, activists fight deportations
Immigrant students benefiting from blitz

By Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | September 7, 2009

A few months ago, Herta Llusho was just another college student. Then the government ordered her deported, and Llusho became an Internet celebrity almost overnight.

An army of supporters - including more than 2,800 Facebook fans, and counting - quickly launched a campaign on her behalf, and the 20-year-old immigrant from Albania recently won a three-month reprieve to remain in the United States. Now, she has become so popular that a stranger in Michigan recently spotted her in a restaurant, and said, “Hey, you’re the girl that they’ve been talking about.’’

The bespectacled honor student is the third young person in the past few weeks to successfully delay her deportation amid extraordinary public campaigns that combined grass-roots organizing with online social networking. Frustrated by the failure to pass federal legislation called the Dream Act that would allow illegal immigrants brought here before they were 15 to apply for legal residency, advocates are pushing to halt their deportations, one by one.

“It’s not just working because we’re getting lucky,’’ said Carlos Saavedra, lead organizer of the Student Immigrant Movement in Massachusetts, who has joined Facebook pages and sent faxes and e-mails to support the immigrants. “Those faxes mean power, and we’re getting the right message out.’’

Critics, while sympathetic to immigrants who were brought here as children, say immigration officials are caving to public support and failing to enforce immigration laws. One critic said the immigrants are being used as “political pawns’’ to push for a broader amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. An estimated 65,000 illegal immigrants graduate from high school in this country every year.

“It’s very wrong to try to use such anecdotes to appeal to the American citizenry that has a large concern about illegal immigration,’’ said William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration, or Alipac.us, an Internet-based organization with 25,000 members who favor reduced immigration. “Americans are being told that we’re at fault. We are not at fault. We’re not the ones that brought them here.’’

In the past few weeks, immigration field office directors in three states have granted delays of deportations to two college students and one recent graduate. Immigrants can fight deportation in a variety of ways, but in these cases they are appealing directly to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency in charge of detaining and deporting immigrants.

ICE, as the agency is known, has the discretion to grant “deferrals,’’ which are stays of deportation, based largely on humanitarian grounds. Deferrals can last days, or years, and vary in outcomes: Some immigrants end up applying for legal residency while others are deported, said ICE spokeswoman Gillian Brigham.

Deferrals remain rare, and usually follow an outpouring of community support, from US representatives, teachers, friends, classmates, and clergy. Last year only 311 people of all ages won deferrals; so far this year 356 have been granted, said Brigham. She said ICE evaluates each case individually and would not comment on specific cases because of privacy laws.

Matt Chandler, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, also declined to comment on the cases. He said the agency’s policies haven’t changed on this issue, but they are being examined.

“Along with all of our immigration and border security policies, the department is conducting a review of policies pertaining to cases such as these,’’ he said.

Some speculated that the Obama administration is acting more sympathetic toward young immigrants because Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and others support the Dream Act. “A lot of the things that everybody was hoping would change haven’t yet,’’ said Andres Benach, a Washington lawyer who aided one of the students. “But this is something where a pattern does appear to be developing.’’

Advocates have successfully fought for young people in the past, but typically the hubbub died down after the student was either deported or allowed to stay. Now, each case is triggering the next, creating a domino effect nationwide.

In an instant, the immigrants’ supporters are mobilizing thousands of people across the United States, who then sign petitions and flood government officials with e-mails, faxes, and telephone calls demanding that they be allowed to stay.

The push began in June, when scores of students and others converged on Washington to demonstrate for the Dream Act. Among them was Walter Lara, a 23-year-old former college student who arrived in the United States from Argentina when he was 3. He was facing deportation in July.

Lara, whose story had been recounted in a Florida newspaper, had only intended to give a speech. But that led to a video, which led to blogging by the Service Employees International Union and Change.org, and mass exposure on Facebook and Twitter.

By the end, more than 4,000 calls and e-mails had been made to federal authorities on his behalf, and he won a deferral until next July, according to SEIU.org.

Lara’s success caught the attention of Taha Mowla in New Jersey, a college student who has lived in the United States since he was 2 and who was facing deportation to Bangladesh in July. He received a similar blitz and had his deportation deferred.

In Michigan, Llusho turned to activists in desperation last month after she and her mother received a letter saying they would be deported, after their asylum case failed. She won a three-month stay, and last week filed for a deferral. She is still fighting to stop her deportation in November.

“This is a scary situation to be in,’’ Llusho said by phone from Michigan. “I’ve always been a person who likes to keep things in, who doesn’t really like to have her whole life story out in public. But everywhere we went, everyone said, you don’t have any other options.’’

At the moment, advocates pushing to halt deportations have more cases than they can handle, and some cases fail. They set up a form at Dreamactivist.org to urge young immigrants facing deportation to contact them for help.

“There’s too many students to do one by one,’’ said Josh Bernstein, director of immigration for SEIU in Washington. “Inevitably you can’t succeed. It has to be leading toward something that makes our system more sane.’’

Hoping to be next in line is Jorge-Alonso Chehade, a recent graduate of the University of Washington, who came to the United States when he was 14 from Peru. He is facing deportation next month.

Roberto Gonzales, an assistant professor at his alma mater, is one of those running his Facebook page.

“He invited almost everybody he knew on Facebook, and I invited anybody that I thought would be sympathetic,’’ said Gonzales, a sociologist in the school of social work.

Without the full blitz, Chehade’s Facebook page reached 1,873 members late last month. Yesterday, that number surpassed 1,988.

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