“Immigration Agents Came for Our Student” #FreeClaudia

Claudia Rueda is a Cal State Los Angeles student who – like many of the most vocal and passionate leaders of the grassroots immigrants’ rights movement today – does not have immigration status.  She is DACA-eligible, but did not apply for DACA due to the application fee.  She was active in the Los Angeles immigrants rights community, and in fact had led a community-based campaign to support her own mother’s bond case before the Los Angeles Immigration Court.  And just days after supporting her mother’s bond petition, she was herself detained by immigration agents in what appears to have been a targeted operation against her, specifically.  Her case has generated substantial public and social media outrage (see #FreeClaudia).

In a Los Angeles Times editorial, two of Claudia’s professors, Beth Baker and Alejandra Marchevsky, express their outrage over the federal government’s detention of Claudia. They write:  “Claudia is the face of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. Under current executive guidelines, any immigrant suspected of a crime, even if never arrested, charged, or convicted, has become a priority for deportation. Basic due process, such as the right to know the charges and evidence against you, is absent in the immigration system. This policy has led to a 32% increase in immigrant detentions in the first three months of Trump’s presidency compared with the same time last year, and a 100% increase in the detention of people with no criminal record or with only minor traffic infractions. ‘Criminal investigations’ serve as a pretext for a policy of mass deportation of immigrants who have deep ties in local communities.”

Claudia was detained about a month ago, and remains in detention despite a heavily-documented request for prosecutorial discretion, according to her attorney Monika Langarica of the ABA Immigrant Justice Project in San Diego (who, coincidentally, I just met this evening at a panel on DACA and law school admissions).  Her bond hearing is tomorrow (June 9) in San Diego.

-JKoh