Stop the Deportation of Jessica Colotl
Posted On Friday, April 30, 2010 at at 12:15 PM by Dan
This just came in from GLAHR. Please take action (at the bottom) and forward widely.
Jessica is a 21-year-old senior at Kennesaw State University who has been looking forward to graduating this coming fall. She is majoring in political science and minoring in French. She is a founding sister of Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority Inc., and plans to continue her education and become a lawyer. Her friends affirm that she is a brilliant young woman, an excellent student who studies hard. In addition to studying, in order to pay her tuition, Jessica works nights with her mother, as a janitor, cleaning office buildings in the Atlanta Metro Area. Jessica grew up here in Georgia and has never been in trouble with the law.
So, why is Jessica sitting behind bars in a detention center in Gadsden, Alabama awaiting deportation to a country she hasn’t seen in over 10 years?
Jessica came to the United States as a little girl, more than 10 years ago, with her mother. She has lived, studied, and worked here ever since, contributing to her community, enriching her friends’ lives, paying taxes, living her life.
And then on Monday, March 29th, everything changed.
That day, a Kennesaw State University campus police officer ‘pulled her over’ when she was parking in the University parking lot. According to the officer, she was “impeding the flow of traffic.”
She was asked for her license and when she informed the officer she did not have one she was told to come to his office the day after or he would issue an arrest warrant for her. Jessica went to the office on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 and told the truth. She explained there was no possible way for her to obtain a license because, though she had lived almost all of her life in Georgia, she was legally undocumented. The officer charged with campus security proceeded to detain her. She was arrested and jailed in Cobb County where the county’s 287(g) agreement allows for local sheriffs to enforce federal immigration law. From there she was put directly into deportation proceedings and has been behind bars ever since.
Yesterday afternoon, an immigration judge denied her bond and ordered her to leave the country within 30 days. She is being sent back to Mexico, a country she hasn’t been to since she was 10 years old, only months before she is to graduate from college.
Why is Jessica being deported? Has she committed some terrible crime? Is she ‘sapping precious state resources’ from citizens? Is Jessica the “illegal alien” we’re told we should fear?
No.
Jessica is a hard working, smart college student who enriches the state of Georgia and the United States of America by her presence and her contributions. We want Jessica’s nightmare to end. She represents the kind of young person that makes Georgia a better place; she should be allowed to remain in the state and country in which she grew up.
We support Jessica, we march for Jessica, we fight for Jessica to remain in Georgia!
Contact representative John Lewis at (404) 659-0116 or (202) 225-3801 and ask him to:
1) GET INVOLVED in Jessica Colotl’s case! Tell him to contact DHS and STOP her deportation!
2) SPONSOR the Dream Act to help students like Jessica and thousands of others!
