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Student's Deportation Roils New Mexico Town
ROSWELL, N.M. - This conservative city on the barren eastern plains of New Mexico long had been spared the acrimonious debates over illegal immigration that have racked so much of the Southwest.
That is, until December, when immigration enforcement entered the murky terrain of the local high school.
A school security officer stopped Karina Acosta, an 18-year-old pregnant Roswell High School senior, and discovered she was in the country illegally. He called federal immigration authorities, who swiftly deported her.
The district superintendent protested and the officer was removed from the school and transferred back to the city Police Department. About three dozen angry students and parents marched on police headquarters -- a notable event in a town not accustomed to controversy -- and were met by a handful of counterdemonstrators who backed the officer.
The schools suffered a sudden drop in attendance as students whose parents were in the country illegally kept them home. The local newspaper was peppered with angry letters to the editor denouncing illegal immigrants. And even two months later, unease permeates the community.
"What shocked me more than anything is what it did to this town," said Coreta Justus, one of Acosta's teachers. In the classroom, she said, "you can feel the difference vibrating from the students. I don't think they have those safety feelings anymore. School used to be a very safe place."
In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that illegal immigrants had the right to attend public schools and that educators could not ask students whether they were in the country legally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a policy against entering campuses.
But local police forces like Roswell's are increasingly being pressured to crack down on illegal immigrants.
"You have legislatures that say one thing, a Supreme Court that has ruled something else," said Scott Douglass, Roswell's interim police chief.
"The country's not giving really clear signals."
Douglass defended his officer, saying he was obligated to call immigration officials once he learned that Acosta was in the country illegally.
There have been cases elsewhere of local police arresting illegal immigrants at schools to be deported. Last year in Tucson, police were called to a high school because a ninth-grader was caught with marijuana. When the student's family arrived, they arrested the student, his mother and his brother and handed them over for deportation.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund sued the Albuquerque Police Department in 2005 after officers called the Border Patrol to a local high school. In a settlement last year, police agreed to stop asking residents about their immigration status.
"A school should be a safe haven, and any sort of law enforcement related to immigration status should be very, very limited," said Marisol Perez, an attorney with the Mexican American legal advocacy group. That conflicts with the widely held opinion that police should be free to ask suspects whether they are in the country legally, she noted.
Roswell, the home of the New Mexico Military Institute, is an island of motels, gas stations and modest houses. For decades, illegal immigrants have come here to work in the surrounding dairies and ranches, mixing with Latino families whose ancestors settled here before the land was part of the United States.
In the city, 44% of residents and 60% of students are Latino. Roswell is also home to a number of Border Patrol agents, and the agency has a training facility 40 miles to the south.
Karina Acosta came to Roswell from Mexico in 2004. Her teachers say that at first she felt alienated from other students and wanted to return to her home country, but slowly adjusted. Polite and industrious, she improved immensely in school and started working with her mother in a fast-food restaurant.
On Nov. 27, she was driving her friend Brenda Molina and Molina's brother to school. Stopping in a fire lane outside the neighboring middle school to drop off the brother, she caught the attention of Roswell police Officer Charlie Corn, Roswell High's safety officer.
According to Molina and a written account from Acosta's mother, Bertha, Corn pulled up behind Acosta in the high school parking lot. When Acosta admitted she didn't have a license, Corn asked her whether she was in the country legally. Corn told her to bring proof of legal residency the next day.
Acosta did not see Corn for several days. On Dec. 5, Corn ordered Acosta to his office and called immigration authorities on his cellphone. The immigration officials told him to hold her for deportation, according to Douglass, the police chief.
Acosta's mother said in her statement that she rushed to the school and Corn handed her his cellphone and told her to talk to the immigration official, but she declined.
Bertha Acosta could not be reached for comment; friends say she is terrified. Corn said he had been directed not to comment. Teachers and students complain that Corn frequently asked Latino students to prove they were in the country legally and got one other youth deported several years ago.
Corn's supporters say he has no racial biases and point out that his wife is Latina.
After news of the deportation broke, teachers say, parents refused to let illegal immigrant children go to school.
Some teachers may secretly approve of the deportation but don't realize how it affected students, said one of Acosta's teachers, Dolores Fresquez.
"My kids from Mexico are angry and hurt," Fresquez said. Supporters of the deportation "don't understand how many in this school are here illegally."
One of the counterdemonstrators at police headquarters Dec. 14 was Jack Satterfield, 53, whose youngest daughter goes to Roswell High School and deals with classes crowded by, he believes, illegal immigrants. A retired construction worker, he thinks Corn's action "was great. Our schools are so overpopulated. The majority of the people agreed with it."
City leaders are eager to put the incident behind them.
"This was a first-time occurrence and hopefully a last-time occurrence," City Councilman James Monteith said. "I have no ill thoughts about that man [Corn], and I feel terribly sorry for her."
But mutual distrust lingers. Latino activists say the problem extends beyond Acosta's deportation. Tales are rampant of Latinos pulled over by police for alleged traffic violations and questioned about their immigration status.
Adolfo Reyes, 38, a U.S. citizen, said that happened to him in December. Combined with the deportation, it has made him worry about what could happen to his children if they're stopped by authorities.
"We're concerned they're going to call [immigration] on our kids," Reyes said. "Our kids don't carry their birth certificates or IDs."
Douglass said the Police Department was still trying to determine when it was appropriate to ask residents about their immigration status.
"I've been trying to educate myself and hammer out a policy," Douglass said. The Acosta case has "muddied the spring pretty good, and it's hard to have any clear direction."
nicholas.riccardi@ latimes.com
© 2008 The Los Angeles Times
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19 Comments so far
Show AllThe item mentions she was employed at a "fast food restaurant." Was its owner arrested and fined?
La Migra in this country has long been a national disgrace.
karlof1
Are suggesting that the owner SHOULD be arrested and fined? What in the hell has happened to this country? When did we get so vindictive, hypnotized and hysterical? When did it become a duty of anybody who owns a business to self-deputize themselves and become an extension of the hammer in the fist of the law? Wake up!
Surely, the issue of immigration can be resolved without the disgrace of traumatizing innocent children? I'm reminded of the way the Nazis would scour the schools in France (and other countries) during the nineteen-forties. At that time the "illegal" children were Jewish. Today, in New Mexico, the religion is different. The language is different. What remains the same is the contempt for the rights of children to not be terrified, to feel safe at school, to be safe from arrest for being of the same blood as their parents.
revoltnow--The law is the law until it gets changed. If you "knowingly" hire an illegal, you are subject to arrest and either/both fine/jail. This was instituted in the 1980s, and as a business manager at the time I had to screen and document the people I hired. If I didn't do my job, I would be fired. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. At the time, there was a movement for the Statue of Liberty to be demolished, because the sentiments it represents and voices on its mantle have never really been a part of the USA. Do goods or money need a passport to enter a country? Then why does a human?
Illegal immigration is a wedge politics issue being fostered by the U.S. political right. It always means illegal immigration from the South. Ironically, a lot of U.S. citizens would like to escape to Canada, with its higher standard of living, socialized medicine and a civil society that generally opposes foreign wars.
The Israeli-style wall being built on the southern border should be a wake up call to the ugliness being funded by the U.S. government. Like war, you can't stop this sort of thing when vested interests become institutionalized and start sucking down our tax dollars.
The solution is to rescind NAFTA to ensure that Mexico can grow its local economy. The illegal immigration issue is a distraction from the economic destruction that has been wreaked by such trade deals, forcing people to emigrate.
Problem:
The United States needs hundreds of thousands of new workers from Mexico and Latin America each year for low paying jobs that make for a functioning economy. But under the immigration quota system it only allows tens of thousands to get legal permanent resident visas each year. So, although the U.S.A. NEEDS hundreds of thousands legal immigrants, it only WANTS tens of thousands. How will the other NEEDED hundreds of thousands enter? Undocumented!
The real problem:
This country does not WANT what it NEEDS.
Solution:
The United States needs to WANT the number it NEEDS and allow hundreds of thousands of workers to enter as legal permanent residents. Then, and only then, will there be no more undocumented workers as immigrants cue up in immigration lines based on realistic numbers.
When this country doesn't make realistic quotas, the quota is met before the need is met. Then employers with unfilled, low paying jobs keep their doors open for employees to fill no matter their documentation. Contrary to popular belief, undocumented workers would willingly stand in line and be one of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants that the USA needs.
DOCUMENT WHAT WE NEED and then the problem of undocumented workers will no longer exist! If not, our country itself is causing the problem. Then it manipulates it to create fear in the rest of the population. A population too fearful to see the real picture of being fooled by our immigration policies.
lucianuevas, your argument is very well stated. The USA is divided against itself and it can not be united until we apply some basic logic to the 'immigration issue'. Walls are not the answer; for every wall ever built there is a ladder that is one foot taller :)
Obviously, the lord high acting Chief Douglass is incapable of understanding the law because it doesn't consistently say what he wants it to say. Otherwise, one might simply adjure him to use his head. Implicit in the idea of limited government is that law enforcement officers not embark on "aggressive enforcement" of imperfect laws. Out of the abundance of his heart his mouth has spoken, and his actions speak louder than his words. He should contemplate the meaning of "...it has been our sad experience that giving a man a little authority", he immediately employs unrighteous dominion over those under his authority.... It's real basic ethical stuff which is not prevalent in his system. I'm just another white guy living in rural Arizona, and it "roils" the hell out of me that a person so entrusted would abuse his authority to impose his own will on others. Why don't we apply his logic to the incredible influx of people from Ohio into our area? I don't like looking out on this steel curtain between my home and Sonora. What mentality has brought this upon us?
"Well Americans,
What nothin to do?
Why don't you kick yourself out?
You're an immigrant too!"
White Stripes
Maybe to you, NRA, it might seem that way but viewed from the Rez, anyone that has European roots is an immigrant!
The Mehicans, por exemple, AREN'T immigrants because they were born here in Norte Americano; just as their remote ancestors had been way back when...
And who exactly was going to pay for this girl's maternity costs?? Not me, I hope.Let the Mexican Government pay!!
gellero said "And who exactly was going to pay for this girl's maternity costs?? Not me, I hope.Let the Mexican Government pay!!"
With all the money going to pay for killing people in Iraq, I don't think the USA is in much of a position to pay for health care, hers, yours or mine. If we lived in a country where the people's money was spent on universal health care and other benefits for improving people's lives, I doubt that such a consideration would even enter your mind. And wouldn't that be a great thing!
NRA, I curse you that you and your family be forever thought of and treated as your msg here indicates you wish for others. You are obviously not an American because you are an embarrassment to us. Why don't you go somewhere where you are an obscure minority yourself -- you'll fit in better.
The entire "Illegal Immigration" argument is being carefully stage managed by the Mega-corporations with one very Clear Goal in mind: Keep Wages Low Everywhere.
They depend on the "illegal" workers who have no recourse when they are paid less than minimum wage. The economy of Mexico has been deliberately trashed to create millions of people so desperate that they are willing to risk Death to get those low wages.
The same corporate honchos who created this mess then go on TV and piously intone about only hiring illegals for jobs that "Americans Don't Want to Do."
Knowing full well that Americans would be Happy to accept those jobs if they paid a Living Wage.
The net result is stagnant wages for US Citizens and rampant unemployment for everyone.
The Corporate criminals responsible don't care so long as they can continue to suck the financial lifeblood of this country.
lucianuevas;
I appreciate your idea, but I think its kinda near-sighted. Bringing in hundreds of thousands of legal residents each year, to perform the sh*t work, will create more problems than it solves. The question is of social mobility. Basically, in order for it to work, it would have to create a permanent 'underclass' of immigrants who do the sh*t work. Sounds horrible, don't you think? More likely, though, it will simply create a larger consumer base. Social mobility again. Pablo may be glad to become a permanet resident and pick lettuce for $7 an hour, but his kids will want(and of course, Pablo would want this for them) a higher socio economic status. Which means we'd just be increasing our population perpetually, without solving the sh*t job labor market problem.
Mexicans are already the largest minority. And by 2050 they will probably even displace the current racist majority, whether they like it or not.
It's very simple, those who own, use the rest of us. The more workers available the lower the wages.
Until the economic model changes we will see one group fighting the other, both competing for the bosses faveur.The owners step back and are amussed by such cheap intertainment!
We used up to sometime in the 70's a economic model based on a balance of public, private partnership. Then came the model presented by milton Freidman,which shifted the paradym to sm gov and releasing market forces. Here we are. The Chicago school of Business.
Immigration is not an issue. I dont care if an immigrant has the correct documents, with t's crossed and i's dotted, or not. It doesn't make a difference to me. Let them go to school, work with full labor rights, and live in peace. This whole issue is spurred by nothing but vile, anti-brown racism.
When some racist old white woman complains about "illegal immigrants" moving in, did she check their documents? Did she ask to see them? I have a feeling that's not the issue - the issue is people don't want brown people moving in.
Are we looking at another White Flight?
I say, let em in! Amnesty, amnesty, amnesty! And this action at the school is just plain fascist, targeting pregnant students. Hate is not a family value!
Hey, if people are worried about illegal immigrants, they SHOULD support amnesty. Once they get their documents, isn't the issue dead? Problem solved? No, thats not what they care about. Not about documents; its about race.
Si se puede! Amnistia!
I believe that GRAPPA has it cleared up, and I see this as part of a long term strategy.
The issue of day to day machinations are merely leading up to the eventual unification of Canada+USA+Mexico, as part of long planned NWO globalization.
Once we're all "in it" together, the power brokers (and back breakers) will have even more control over their profits and security. I suggest that much of the current (and future) consternation (and propaganda) is just the chess pieces being moved around for the overall strategic goals.