Let UIC student who came here at 6 stay in U.S.; Faces deportation after DUI brings illegal status to light

Chicago Sun Times
December 3, 2009
By Mark Brown

The United States government wants Rigo Padilla to go back where he came from.

If he doesn't return to Mexico within the next 14 days, federal immigration agents have promised to do the job for him.

Never mind that Padilla's parents brought him here from Mexico at age 6 and that he hasn't been back there in the 15 years since.

Never mind that Chicago is the only home the 21-year-old can remember and that he has no close relatives left in Mexico.

Never mind that he's a good kid, a top student and a longtime volunteer with Erie Neighborhood House, a community social service agency.

None of that matters because Padilla made a mistake, the type of blunder feared by every undocumented immigrant living in America, even though it would probably have amounted to little more than a temporary setback in the life of your average 21-year-old born on this side of the border.

Padilla was arrested in January for driving under the influence, and in the process, he showed up on the grid. By that I mean his arrest brought him to the attention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who troll the intake at Cook County Jail looking for candidates for deportation.

Once Padilla was "discovered" living openly and in plain sight here -- alongside millions and millions of other U.S. residents who came here illegally from Mexico and whom we will continue to intentionally overlook -- he was told he'd have to leave.

In order to pass an immigration reform law through Congress, it seems the Obama administration is intent on showing it is serious about deporting "criminals" who weren't supposed to be here in the first place. Deportations are up 18 percent. Padilla's removal counts the same in that particular Capitol Hill box score as that of a drug-dealing, gang-banging ax murderer.

This makes absolutely no sense, which only brings it in line with everything else about this country's totally dysfunctional immigration system.

Some day, we will sort out our great immigration mess and figure out what to do with those millions and millions of Mexicans who tried to live the American dream without first receiving our express permission -- my own stated preference for some version of legalization already having irritated many of you to no end.

But until we can reach some agreement, or one side gets the upper hand on the other, we ought to at least continue to use common-sense discretion in how we enforce our immigration laws. Even George Bush did that. And we ought to start by leaving Rigo Padilla alone.

Let him finish his education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Let him go on to law school and learn to become a lawyer like the ones he grew up idolizing on "Law and Order." Let him contribute to this country the way he always thought he could until he rolled through a stop sign.

I must state right here: Driving under the influence is serious business. It's reckless and dangerous and potentially lethal. But I also know our court system doesn't treat your average DUI as a capital offense. For his DUI, Padilla was sentenced to a fine and court supervision. He says he knows he made a serious mistake. If he hadn't been born in Mexico, that could have been the end of it.

Padilla's case was originally charged as a felony because he had no driver's license. As you know, undocumented immigrants can't get Illinois driver's licenses. It was pleaded down to a misdemeanor.

But be clear about this. Padilla is not being deported on grounds that he's some kind of criminally negligent drunken driver.

He's being deported because his parents didn't have approval to sneak him across the California border when he was a first-grader. Note: We're not deporting the parents. (I know. I know. Many of you would happily pack them all up together and ship them off in a boxcar with their neighbors. But guess what? The rest of us are not going to let that happen.)

The City Council's Human Relations Committee voiced its support for Padilla a few weeks ago, and there's a rally scheduled for Friday at which some Illinois congressmen are expected to weigh in on his side, too.

I expect you'll hear more about Padilla's case in the coming days as the deadline nears, although I don't anticipate this turning into another Elvira Arellano situation. Padilla says he has no intention of hiding out or seeking asylum. If nobody in the Obama administration sees the error of its ways, Padilla says, he'll reluctantly board a plane for Mexico.

Sending the Mexicans back where they came from isn't quite what I'd expected with Barack Obama in the White House.

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