The Making of a Dream
Page 39
effect on immigration policy, 17, 18, 39
Sessions, Jeff, xi, 33, 70, 167, 314, 320
Sharry, Frank, xiv, 32, 117, 137, 143, 144, 256
Silva, Astrid, xi, 143, 278, 279
Simcox, Chris, 46
Sinema, Kyrsten, 225
social media, Internet sites, and blogs, 111, 122, 157, 207, 209–10
Aldana blog, 209
Facebook, DREAMers and, 37, 161, 178, 194, 195, 211, 222, 226, 255, 317, 318
Gonzalez’s blog, 37, 48, 50–51, 157
LGBTQ bloggers, 122
negative consequences, 211
social justice issues and, 207, 272, 315
“Trail of Dreams” and, 105, 106, 109, 111, 122
“We Are Marie” campaign, 37
Sotelo, Eddie “Piolín” (Tweety Bird), 61
Sousa, Carolina, x, 14, 15–16, 41, 104, 131
Sousa Matos, Francisca, x, 14, 83–84, 317
Sousa-Rodriguez, Felipe. See Matos Sousa, Felipe
Sousa-Rodriguez, Isabel (previously Juan), x, 64, 69, 71, 73, 87, 119–20, 137, 316, 317
activism of, 131–32, 144, 176, 248–49, 264, 273
citizenship and, 245, 247–48
DREAM Act failure and, 171–72
Florida Immigrant Coalition job, 317
immigrant underground railroad and, 88
LGBTQ rights and, 137
name change, 245–46, 264
Obama meets with, 137–39
Obama’s deferred action order and, 280
relationship with Felipe Matos, 74–76, 77, 82–87, 121–24, 132, 181–84, 220, 245, 248, 290–91
scholarship to City University, 290
“Trail of Dreams” and, 89, 90, 95–96, 97, 99, 101, 101–13, 117–31, 126n
South Carolina immigration laws, 201
Southern Poverty Law Center, 109
Spielberg, Steven, 297
Suarez, Tony, 93n
Sudbay, Juoe, 136–37
SWER (Students Working for Equal Rights), xiii, 43, 63–64, 72, 73, 87
Taitz, Orly, 82, 283
Tea Party Republicans, 143, 148, 164, 207, 236, 248
Telemundo, 63, 285, 300, 321
Tennessee, 38
immigrant communities in, 39
Teodoro, Renata, 171, 176
Texas
educational opportunity for illegals, 11
in-state tuition and, 40
threats to sue Trump over DACA, 320
unaccompanied minors and, 254
“undocumented and unafraid” in, 115
US-Mexican border and, 66
U.S. v. Texas, 281–84, 289, 292–94
thedream.us, xi
Time magazine, 321
“We Are Americans” cover, 222
Torres, Gustavo, 130
TPS (temporary protected status), 315
“Trail of Dreams,” xi, 89, 90, 95–99, 101, 101–13, 117–24, 142, 208
arrival in Washington, media coverage, and reception, 125–31, 126n
goal of, 97, 117, 206
impact of, 132, 133, 180, 209
Juan-Felipe “come out,” 122–24
“Oscar” and, 112–13, 130
supporters of, 92, 98, 102–4, 107, 112, 114, 129, 130, 210
Tran, Tam, 69–70, 72, 134
Trinity College, 256, 301–2
Trump, Donald, 33, 82, 205, 284–85
Arpaio and, 315
ban on Muslim immigrants, 285, 315
border wall and, 285, 287, 315
DACA and, 315, 319–20
election of, 314
immigration policy, 314–15
Ramos and, 285–87
remarks about Mexicans, 284–85
sanctuary cities and, 316
TPS renewal and, 315
Univision and, 285
UndocuBlack Network, 308
UNIDOS.US, xiii, 11
University of California, 321
Los Angeles’ Center for Labor Research and Education, 178–79
University of Illinois, 57
University of Texas at Austin, undocumented students at, 65
University of Virginia, 177
Univision, 73, 82, 98, 171
DACA supported by, 321
Latin Grammy Awards, 276, 278
Obama’s deferred action order and, 276
Trump and, 285, 286
Unzueta, Tania, xi, 16, 57n, 166, 251
as activist, 56, 57, 114–15, 133–35, 140, 228
as college student, 57
deportation strategies and, 114
Durbin assistance to, 57
immigration reform and, 118
as lesbian, 135, 137
McCain sit-in and, 133–34
Mijente (My People) and, 306–7, 315
“No Papers, No Fear” Ride for Justice, 222
“undocumented and unafraid,” 114–15
UWD and, 308
vulnerability of, 134–35
USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), 263, 264, 267, 281, 304
US Congress
border security and detention of illegal immigrants, 46–47, 47n
BRIDGE Act, 316, 322
DACA and, 320
Democratic control of, 80
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal, 164, 165, 166–67, 170, 171, 209
DREAM Act, 12, 16, 31, 33, 126n, 141, 143, 148, 161–71, 236, 314, 321–22
Gonzalez testimony and, 34–36
Illegal Immigration Reform and
Immigrant Responsibility Act, 13
immigration and welfare laws (1996), 9, 13, 21, 32, 65–66
immigration reform and, 80–81, 82, 126, 126n, 127–28, 140, 141, 142, 143, 236, 257, 277
Kennedy immigration bill, 55, 127, 133
lawmakers sympathetic to illegal immigrants, xi–xii, 8, 11–12, 30–31, 55, 65, 293
midterm elections (2006), 67
midterm elections (2010), 207
Patriot Act, 17
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, 13
pro-immigrant bills, 30–31
Sensenbrenner bill and, 58–59, 65
Tea Party’s sweep of, 164, 207
Tran film and, 69
US prison system, 306
U.S. v. Texas, 271, 281–84, 289, 292–94, 310–11
Utah immigration laws, 201
UWD (United We Dream), x, xi, xiii, xiv, 72, 98, 115, 118, 136, 161, 166, 171, 264, 313
advocacy work for detainees and deportations, 210, 231
AFL-CIO and, 230
Andrade-Ayala and, 234
changes at, 307–10
conference (2016), 308–9
confronting GOP members, 204
demonstration for U.S. v. Texas and, 294
donors, 222
DREAM Act new version and, 322
DREAMers and deportation, 200
DREAMers of Virginia, 184–85, 228
Dream Summer and, 178–79
“End Our Pain” campaign, 185, 206
“genius grant” to Jiménez Moreta, 322
growth of, 308
lobbying for DREAM Act, 161
Matos Sousa and, 264, 290
as nonprofit, ban on political activity, 287
Obama and, 203, 207
Pacheco and, 185
response to Trump’s policies, 315–16
“Right to DREAM” campaign, 206
split within, 140, 176
Texas, xi
“Trail of Dreams” and, 114, 117, 132
UWD (United We Dream) Action, 287–88
Vaca, Ingrid, 276, 277
Vargas, César, 306
Vargas, Felipe, 104, 107, 111–12
Vargas, Jose Antonio, 180–81, 216, 222, 294, 315–16
Velazquez, Oscar, 297
Venezuela, 91
exile community in Florida, 91
Vermont
same sex marriage, 209n
Sanders and
, 306
Violand-Sánchez, Emma, 72, 177, 187, 193, 303
Virginia
Andrade-Ayala in, 5, 25–30, 53–54, 115–17, 148, 177–79
anti-immigrant positions in, 256
Arlington County jail, 188
asylum cases in, 259
DREAMers of Virginia, 184–85, 228
DREAM Project in, 177, 179, 228
ICE Secure Communities program, 186
“undocumented and unafraid,” 115–17
Vives, Carlos, 278
Voices of Justice, 105
Washington, D.C., same sex marriage law, 209n
Washington Post
immigration coverage, 57
Vargas at, 180–81, 222
Washington state, immigrant communities, 39
Westminster College, 47, 49, 152
Williams, Maggie, 256
Wisconsin, 38
first openly lesbian senator, 209
Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), 29
Women’s March (2017), 313
Wong, Kent, 178–79
Yin, Monona, 290
Zuckerberg, Mark, 226, 321
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LAURA WIDES-MUÑOZ is Vice President for Special Projects & Editorial Strategy at Fusion Network, where she serves as a senior editor for the digital and TV investigative teams. She was a staff writer at the Associated Press for more than a decade, has reported from Cuba and throughout Central America, and has written for the Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times, among other outlets. She has won the Associated Press Managing Editors Award and multiple Society of Professional Journalists Awards. She conceived of this book during a 2013 Harvard University Nieman Foundation for Journalism fellowship. She lives in Miami with her family.
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* Name changed to protect her privacy.
* The AFL-CIO, whose rank-and-file members were still warier of immigrants potentially taking their jobs, was less enthusiastic but lent its official support.
* David Ray of the Federation for American Immigration Reform complained on an October 4 CNN morning news show, “Here we have a group of people who, first of all, thumb their nose at U.S. immigration laws, and then ride around the country trying to blanket themselves in a status of victimhood. I mean, this is a joke.” (“Interview with David Ray, Maria Elena Durazo,” Saturday Morning News, CNN, October 4, 2003. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0310/04/smn.11.html.)
* Muñoz became the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.
* The CCC had established an immigrant-organizing committee in 2000. Now it took on a bigger role under the new title of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement.
* Senator Frist wasn’t in charge of who won Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts, but during his leadership, much of the increase in detention money found its way to the private prison company Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), based in his home state of Tennessee (where at least two top Frist staffers would eventually land). CCA and the GEO Group engineered contracts that guaranteed them a minimum number of detainees each night, creating de facto detention quotas for law enforcement. CCA, later rebranded CoreCivic, had been on the brink of bankruptcy at the turn of the century. Detaining immigrants gave the company a new lease on life.
* Two years before, the quirky independent film A Day Without a Mexican had comically imagined what the country would look like without its Latino workforce (baseball rosters half empty, children without nannies, food production backed up, government bureaucrats gone, leaves blowing everywhere). Now it seemed as if the essence of the film were coming true.
* She had been scheduled to go to Washington, DC, along with Tereza Lee, to testify at the ill-fated September 12, 2001, DREAM Act hearing.
* The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 allows most Cubans who make a legal entry into the United States to apply for residency after a year. Cubans can also generally receive financial aid and other benefits almost immediately. And until January 2017, Cubans who made it to dry US territory were generally allowed to stay, regardless of whether or not they came with a visa. But one of the most underreported benefits that Cubans have is that there is an additional twenty thousand visas set aside for them each year. That’s nearly the same number of visas given to Mexico, whose population is more than ten times that of Cuba.
* Orlando talk show host and former GOP state legislator Tony Suarez explained Puerto Ricans’ support for immigrant rights beyond simply shared language and culture: “There is not a Puerto Rican family in the U.S. who doesn’t have someone who is married to a Dominican, an Argentinian or a Mexican who may have someone in their family affected [by the immigration laws].” (Laura Wides-Muñoz, “Fla. Puerto Ricans Could Play a Key Election Role,” San Diego Union-Tribune, August 1, 2012.)
* In 2007, Ros-Lehtinen hosted meetings for two Colombian high school students, Alex and Juan Gomez, who faced deportation, and she later helped the young men gain a temporary reprieve.
* The powerful Cuban exile and South Florida businessman Jorge Mas Canosa bought the building shortly before his death in 1997. The family oversaw its restoration.
* Chavez was a complex figure for the immigration advocates. He had championed the fair treatment of farmworkers, even as he had strongly opposed illegal immigration precisely because he believed it lowered wages for those already here. Yet he eventually had supported a path to citizenship for the same reason: because he believed it would level the playing field.
* The walkers also met with South Florida Republican representatives Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who had cosponsored the latest version of the DREAM Act in the House, as well as with Senator Durbin, who advocated for a similar measure in the Senate—although it seemed clear that any DREAM Act provision would now be wrapped into the comprehensive legislation.
* Joe Sudbay, who’d spent three decades as a policy analyst and advocate, and who helped with the White House protest by LGBTQ veterans, began advising America’
s Voice during this time.
* “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was the compromise President Bill Clinton had acquiesced to early in his administration, a delicate balance meant to reward the lesbian, gay, and bisexual communities that had backed his candidacy by revoking the outright ban against homosexuality in the military while accommodating lawmakers’ fear of openly gay military personnel. It boiled down to essentially: Keep quiet about your sexuality (and pray you don’t get outed), and you can serve.
* Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, and the District of Columbia had previously approved same-sex marriage through the courts, through legislation, or by executive order.
* But Hanen also went above and beyond, ruling that the states were likely to be able to show that the federal government had all but abdicated its responsibility to carry out Congress’s directive to deport millions of people by officially allowing them to stay and thus had a right to step in. He concluded that Obama had likely violated the so-called take care clause of the Constitution, which requires the president to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” by seeking to give status (albeit temporary and with limitations) to such a wide swath of people.
* At first the Justice Department seemed to flout his order, sending out three-year work permits to thousands of undocumented immigrants, a move it later claimed had been a mistake. When Hanen threatened to hold DHS secretary Jeh Johnson in contempt, it reversed course and professed contrition.
* It wasn’t the only demonstration that morning. Across the street, on the Capitol grounds, hundreds of activists showed up to demonstrate against corporate donations to political campaigns. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, were among three hundred protesters arrested for unlawful demonstration activities on federal grounds. That mostly white, union-backed protest stood in stark contrast to the mostly Latino demonstrators across NE First Street, but eventually they came over and offered their support. (Diane Ruggiero and Daniella Diaz, “Co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s Arrested at Capitol,” CNN, April 19, 2016. http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/18/politics/ben-jerry-democracy-awakens/.)