Manuel Guerra, Dream Act activist, dies of cat parasite at 32


Posted: 5:26 p.m. Monday, Jan. 18, 2016
By Eliot Kleinberg - Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Manuel Guerra Casas was an illegal alien. Or an undocumented alien. Or a “Dreamer.”

People’s choices of such adjectives are as politically charged as the concepts they describe. Those concepts and Guerra were inseparable right up to the Treasure Coast-based immigration activist’s death Monday at 32.

+Manuel Guerra

Guerra of Port St. Lucie, entered St. Lucie Medical Center Thursday and died around midday Monday, said his sister, Candalaria Guerra.

She said he’s believed to have contracted toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease that is rarely harmful to humans, from a pet cat.

Guerra was a primary advocate for the federal Dream Act, which would allow individuals who arrived in the U.S. before age 16, and who have finished high school here and are younger than 35, to apply for conditional permanent residence.

To stay on that path, they would have to finish at least two years of college or serve two years in the military.

Legal residence would be granted six years after they entered the program, as long as they had no problems with the law.

Guerra’s attorney, Richard Hujber of Boynton Beach, said while Guerra fought for the act, he wouldn’t have benefitted from it. He’d come here after his 16th birthday.

“He marched to Tallahassee. He marched to Washington, D.C. He was such a campaigner and supporter of the Dream Act movement. The irony is that he just missed it by a few months,” Hujber said.

Guerra came from Guanajuato, Mexico, about 2001, and graduated from South Fork High School in Stuart, but lived in South Florida without legal status for years.

He worked as a landscaper, but wanted to become a military chaplain, but his situation barred him from joining a seminary.

He was spared deportation in August 2011. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency announced it no longer would seek to detain and deport undocumented people who have been in the U.S. for long periods and who have not had serious run-ins with the law. Guerra saw his case dropped.

That same year, Guerra fought to help defeat proposed Florida legislation targeting undocumented immigrants.

“Maybe the people in the Legislature will realize that many of us have been here for a long time and it looks like we will be here many more years,” he said at the time.

And Guerra said in 2013 that he would be a registered Republican if he were a citizen and could vote.

A prayer vigil for Guerra was set for Monday evening, and services Thursday, both at Holy Cross Catholic Church, at 15939 S.W. 150th St., in Indiantown, where Guerra often spoke, his sister said.

He is survived by his parents, in Mexico, as well as nine sisters and three brothers.

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