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Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Oregonian Editorial

On the morning the news broke that the governor intends to make it much harder for illegal immigrants to get an Oregon driver's license, Alejandra Trujillo dropped by the Tanasbourne DMV office.

Trujillo, a 20-year-old studying criminal justice at Portland Community College's Rock Creek campus, misplaced her purse some time back and her license with it.

The Driver and Motor Vehicle Services clerk asked for additional identification, not proof of legal residency. "Under the governor's order," said Dave House, an agency spokesman, "we will start verifying Social Security numbers for all applicants, not just commercial drivers. But the governor's order hasn't taken effect. That won't be implemented until the first half of next year."

In the waning moments of this one, Alejandra Trujillo offered the clerk her Social Security card. "The card appeared to be a complete forgery or fraudulent," House said, so the clerk asked Trujillo if she would take a seat while they ran the paperwork. Then the clerk called Hillsboro police.

Ten days later, Trujillo is in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Tacoma, Wash., awaiting a deportation hearing and "removal" to a country, Mexico, she left when she was 8.

And I'll be honest: I don't know whether to be angry or resigned that she's come to this.

Trujillo is, by all accounts, a spirited, motivated and charming young woman. A 2005 graduate of Sunset High School, she is well known at PCC, counselor Brenda Maldonado said, for her campus activism and advocacy for other students. She was working on a degree, a Darfur awareness campaign and, I'm told, citizenship for herself and her parents.

And then she lost her purse.

"This is a second home for her," Maldonado said. "The faculty and staff are really upset."

They're asking an obvious question: Is there really no room within these borders for a young woman who did her best to play by the rules since her parents broke the rules by bringing her here?

That's not the only question on the table. Oregon's lax ID requirements for obtaining a driver's license have made the state a popular sanctuary for illegal immigrants. But if there's a perpetual squad car in the DMV parking lot, increased numbers of illegal immigrants will forgo licenses, registration and insurance, hardly a positive turn.

No one disputes that Trujillo -- "Alejandra Trujillo Cruz" is the name on her bogus but essential Social Security card, "Alejandra Trujillo-Juarez" according to Immigration -- submitted a forged document to a state agency, then entered a guilty plea in Washington County to forgery, a misdemeanor.

"She has admitted to being in the country illegally," said Lorie Dankers, an ICE spokesperson in Tacoma. "She will go before an immigration judge who will decide whether she can remain here."

That judge will deport Trujillo because we are a nation of laws and walls and border guards. If there are no consequences for sneaking children into this country, whenever their illegal entry is discovered, those laws and walls don't mean anything.

I understand all that, in theory. I just morph from bad cop to good cop when an enterprising 20-year-old girl stands in front of me, asking for nothing more than the chance to grow up in a far better country than the one her parents fled.

When Maldonado went to see her in jail last week, Trujillo apologized that she hadn't had time to finish the final paper in her Chicano-Latino studies class. "I don't think reality had set in yet," Maldonado said.

I'm thinking it has now, in all its just and hopeless glory.

Steve Duin: 503-221-8597; 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201 steveduin@news.oregonian.com http://blog.oregonlive.com/steveduin

counselor Brenda Maldonado
Brenda Ivelisse Maldonado
Multicultural & Oregon Leadership Institute Coordinator
Rock Creek- Building 3, Room 223b
503.614.7279 or 503.614.7435
brenda.maldonado@pcc.edu