More on DREAMer Steven Li

Here’s more on the imminent deportation of DREAMer Steven Li from Julianne Hing of Cololines:

The very same week that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would attempt to add the DREAM Act as an amendment to the defense authorization bill, Immigration and Customs Enforcement was readying itself to take a DREAM Act-eligible youth into custody for deportation. Days later, while the Senate preened and postured in D.C. over a failed move to pass the DREAM Act in September, a family on the other side of the country was being torn apart.

On September 15, ICE arrived at 20-year-old Steve Li’s San Francisco home and took him into custody for his deportation to Peru, where Li was born but has no relatives or contacts. And now, despite a months-long public campaign to keep Li in the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced he’ll be deported next Monday, his attorney Sin Yen Ling confirmed, unless California Sen. Barbara Boxer steps in to issue a private bill on his behalf.

For many people, Li’s story is not unfamiliar: Li’s parents, who face their own removal order, immigrated to Peru from China in the 1980s, partially to help Li’s aging grandparents and partially to escape China’s one-child policy. And there Li was born, before his family immigrated again in 2002 to the U.S. to escape political instability in Peru. His family filed for political asylum in the U.S. but were denied. A judge put out a removal order for their family in 2004, which Li’s parents quietly tried to ignore, all unbeknownst to Li.

In the meantime, Li made the Bay Area his home. He went to school, made friends, enrolled in community college in San Francisco to pursue his plans to become a nurse. Li volunteered at his church and at San Francisco General Hospital. “I told him hopefully he would finish studying here in the U.S. and give back to the country,” his mother Maria Ma Li told the San Francisco Chronicle.

When ICE arrived on Li’s doorstep on September 15 to take him and his parents into custody, he had no idea why they were there. He was transferred to a detention facility in Florence, Arizona, and has since been washing dishes for a dollar a day so he can pay for stamps for letters and phone calls back home.

“I thought it was a mistake,” Li told the Contra Costa Times over one of those phone calls. “I’ve been living (in the United States), studying here. I feel like I’ve been here all my life. All my friends, my teachers, my family is here.” Read more.

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