[applause] in my role today i am wearing two hats one as the director for human rights of children, and the cochair of the newly appointed committee of students of layla. I want to provide a bit of context as to why we invited everyone here faculty, students, staff and a few members of our community here today. Please let me know if im speaking too quickly because i would love to get through this so you can hear everyone. The issue is face today are intrinsically linked to human rights and childrens rights. It promotes the notion that children are not passive objects of carer were Charity Societies and governments have the ability to protect the social and political and civil rights. This includes the right to be safe him of the right to education and the right to family. This right to the framework is also tied to the social justice with bedrock principles being one of acceptance and affirming dignity of all persons. Advancing social justice acquires a full participation of the community of all members of society regardless of legal status. This also means that we address the factors that drive people into situations of vulnerability. Leo university has several efforts underway to improve the conditions for undocumented students on campus and i would like to highlight this with you. Along with 100 catholic president supporting Immigration Reform for citizenship this is profound. The school of medicine was the First Medical School in the nation to openly accept undocumented students and provide ways to support them financially. Also very exciting. And the university has university has been part of a National Research project across several just looks cool looking at the needs of students across campus. This has developed training with faculty and staff to support undocumented students on campus. Most recently, new scholarship the magic scholarship, was created to support undergraduate students who demonstrate financial need but do not qualify for federal aid. The scholarship was championed by students and their Student Government leaders. This is all very exciting and i think its important to demonstrate again the work that we are at doing on this issue. And as i mentioned earlier today, my role here in has also been busy recently appointed cochair and we have named it the Dreamer Committee to implement recommendations of an earlier form to University Committee and undocumented students. I have the pleasure of cochairing this committee with my colleague at the medical school and one of her charges under this committee is to empower staff and faculty, students and Community Members and their families. With that, it is my pleasure to introduce our guest speaker today margaret is the author of two books and her newest book detained and deported. Stories of immigrant families under fire. She is an Award Winning author and a longterm journalists reporting on the arizona and mexico borderlands. Her work has been published in the Washington Post and many regional and local publications. Her newest book detained and deported stories of immigrant families under fire is heart wrenching and hopeful. She reports on corporations and systems profiting from violations of Human Dignity and human rights. The deportation and detention of undocumented individuals. With many of these Rights Violations occurring what i would call hidden in plain sight within american borders. She beautifully profiles the activist and most importantly the survivors of these flawed systems and the rich lives that these individuals lead as members of the community and family members and his workers and students and dreamers. She will provide a big talker approximately 45 minutes which includes meetings from her new and important book and hopefully we have time for a healthy discussion afterwards and she has also agreed to stay and sign her book for those that would like copies and we have a bookstore available in the hallway for those who would like to purchase any of her books area please join me in welcoming her to the podium. Thank you. [applause] thank you so much that was such a nice introduction. And i have to tell you a few weeks ago i met some of those medical students that she was mentioning. The undocumented medical students at the school of medicine and i was doing my book at a local independent bookstore and casually in the q a afterwards people asking what you think about the dreamers and i said it was up to me we would send them all to medical school. And you know i said look at this room all baby boomers in here we need these people to take care of us in our old age. Just off the top of my head. So let the signing portion afterwards this whole group of young people with these came up to talk to me and they said you were talking about us. We are students and we are enrolled in medical school at Loyola University in chicago. And i just cant tell you how amazing and wonderful that was and how much it broadens my heart. And i congratulate you for being in the forefront in doing the kind of work. So thanks also to katherine for bringing us here and to dorothy as well, for being so helpful in bringing me here and also id love to say that im thrilled to have my son here who lives in chicago and i havent even christmas. So its a true pleasure. And if you read my book, he is an excellent researcher and copy editor and ive made good use of his skills in writing this book and he also knows how to calm me down because he has known me for his whole life. And so what im going to do is start off by doing a reading from the introduction to kind of give you the gist of what the book is about. And then we can talk a little bit and i would love to close with another reading from the book to tell you about a specific case that is heart rending as so many of these stories arent. And can everyone hear me all right to im used to talking with a microphone and so i just want to make sure. Okay, this is from the introduction of detained and deported. She sat in her prison scrub and watched the family gather all around her. Husbands are reconnecting with lives and sisters with sisters and mothers with children. It was a sunny sunday in april and the family had flocked to the Detention Center. A jury for profit immigration facility in rural arizona to visit their detained loved ones. And as if she were imagining never letting him go. They have that had brought the little boy spoke to her sister as the child snuggled in his mothers embrace. And imprisoned father sat across the table from his wife clutching her hands. They were trying to talk but their 4yearold daughter who is hungry and tired was below. None of the families had any privacy in the packed room and an impassive guard presided over the reunion keeping a close watch on the mothers and fathers dressed in jailbird scrubs. The visiting room is bleak and windowless but by clearing prison lights. It was a beautiful spring day outside but no rays of sunlight pierced the cinderblock walls. Alone among the detainees yolanda had no family visiting, just me a writer that had come to hear her story. She was glad to be out of her prison unit and she was full of smiles and determined to be cheerful. Yet as she looked at the other detainees she looked at the other kids was fully as she recounted it. During the two years she had spent locked up, she had seen her two little girls and her little boy only sporadically. The children are all american citizens who lived in a distant suburb northwest of phoenix. They came to visit their mother only when a relative or friend to spare the time to drive the 200mile round trip. The last time that she had seen him was two months before it. Yolanda was 32 years old and she had slipped into arizona from mexico 17 years before. He spoke flawless english. Even if she had no papers she almost never had any difficulty finding a job. Until two years ago she had never had trouble with immigration. But the father of her two younger children regularly beat her and one attack triggered a series of disasters that eventually landed her in jail and not attention. And i was going to show you a few pictures of the Detention Center this is the outside of the prison that she is in. This gives you the gist of what it feels like inside of there. And her abusive acts as the two kids and yolanda was facing deportation. She could have accepted removal to mexico right away. But if she were deported she was going to lose her children. So she stayed in the present month after month biting her case and hoping to persuade a judge to overturn the deportation order. Paying to get back to her daughters and also her son. Her spirit flew just once. The last time the kids came to see her, her 5yearold looked at her suspiciously. He said you dont look like my mother he said. Her own child is starting to forget her. And on the mexican side of the border we saw one individual who is just as worried about his kids. He was a 25yearold landscaper from phoenix and i met him early one hot july morning to steps from the international line. They were one of 60 deportees eating beans and rice and humble dining hall run by an order of nuns. [inaudible] born in veracruz you came to think that the age of eight years old and lived there ever since and he spoke perfect english. He and his wife had two small children a boy of four years old and a baby girl both of them were u. S. Citizens. Gustavo had been arrested in phoenix and detained by i. C. E. He rotated through several Detention Centers in arizona and colorado before being tossed back over the border into no boss. He had always worked hard to support the children. What was their mother doing now he wondered, without his wages coming in. And he was staying in the shelter so he would have to leave soon. Novells shelters did not have the ability to house anyone longer than three days. They would have to move on. His mother in phoenix had advised him to go back to veracruz. But he had no intention of returning to a place where everyone was a stranger. He knew what he needed to be. With his children at home in phoenix. And the way to get back over the border and through the arizona desert, the journey would be careless in more ways than one. He could die out there in the heat as so many have done before him and if he made it through he ran the risk of arrest. They catch me i get 10 years in jail he said. And so the human impact of these detentions and deportations cannot be overstated. Families have been torn apart. Mothers and fathers have been turned into single parents. Breadwinners have disappeared. Many children, u. S. Citizens have lost one or both parents and him have ended up in foster care. In the First Six Months of 2011 the year that he first turned up no fewer than 46,000 deportees were mothers and fathers whose children were left behind in the United States. And as i was researching this book i met many of these displaced people. Both in shelters and in Detention Centers in arizona. They were taxi drivers fruit pickers, can auction workers and fast food servers waitresses and hotel housekeepers. Some had lived like third world individuals in the United States speaking spanish, or living in holy mexican communities doing the lowest of low paid labor. And others were indistinguishable from american citizen, dreamers, young and educated, had been in the United States since they were children and lived a more typically american life. They had gone to public school, graduated from high school and aspired to go to college. Then there were the immigrants who lived for years in chicago or florida or virginia and got tripped up at the border after going back to mexico or guatemala to visit family members. Most determined were their parents separated from their kids. [inaudible] and i rarely saw the kids lost their parents but when i did it was painful. The little girl that i saw crying under the table in the family visiting room the day that i visited her haunts me still. Her name is jacqueline and she was an american citizen and she was four years old. It struck me that this tiny child was bearing the burden of her countrys immigration these on her own small shoulders. And the weight of it was absolutely crushing her. Confronted with a scary jail and the angry guards or the unhappy mother and a father who had become a stranger to her. She responded the only way that she could. She threw herself down onto the floor and clenched her fist and she wailed. And so that is what this book is about, the two sides of this issue detention and deportation. I thought that i would play a little bit about how i came to this topic. As catherine mentioned my first book my first book was primarily about the many migrants miles from where i live in arizona and it was also about the trajectory of the journey and the militarization of the border the impact of that on american citizen. And the final chapter of the book i started moving into the current topic. These three young people all work for Panda Express. Im sure that some of you have had some of that Delicious Food in your airport travels. And tucson is not well known for big immigration raids. But for some reason there was a big raid at the Panda Express not too far from where i live about a mile away. And it all started with this young woman that you see here. She had been working there fulltime for four years and she made so little money that she could not feed her child. So she made the mistake of applying for food stamps for him and she used a fake Social Security number and that is how she got caught, you know the number bounced back from the department of economic security. And so the state conducted an investigation at the department of Public Services and they also go after dealers and the highway patrol, and they are bigtime Police People they launch Something Like a sixmonth investigation and i have a papers this high of the amount of time and after that they took into investigating this young woman. And they had listed every wage that she had earned earned and over four years it was less than 50,000 not surprisingly. And so they planned a raid. And they also at the same time became suspicious of the other Panda Express workers and 12 out of 14 of them were undocumented and the employee said that they were totally complicit but of course they denied it and knowing that they were undocumented. But what happened is that they went to the trailer on the south side of tucson and they conducted this where the police cars came out, the sirens, she was asleep in bed with her infant son who is eight months old and locally she was living with family. The police hauled her out of there and they wouldnt even allow her to change out of her pajamas. The child was screaming in her arms and her sister took the little boy and she did not see that little boy again for five months. There are two other young people that also had children and among the 12 workers who were arrested there were 12 young children. There was a raid at later that day at the store itself and they came right before the lunch rush and surrounded in the parking lot with all of these Police Officers and they hauled out all of the workers in their little outfits and their hats and took them down to the Border Patrol where they were charged with felony impersonation of another human being. They had a really great lawyer and so they got off on a misdemeanor but once they settled the criminal case, this is a typical trajectory, they had to go to the Detention Center because they were undocumented immigrants. So most of them were deported pretty quickly but the three of these had been brought to the United States and they all three had very good lawyers and when i interviewed her leadership and a picture of my daughter in her house and her eighthgrade yearbook which was a Pretty Amazing thing. They were about the same age, right about the time that my daughter had just gotten her College Degree and that is when she was released from jail. So that was a wrenching thing for me. I used to see her on my local playground. They were all eventually permitted to stay and they are still in the United States now. But i have a nice quote. I went to visit her five months after this happened when she was back at home and her child was terrified of her. I sat with her in her kitchen the grandmother was holding freddy and i was there and freddy was looking really upset, he would not allow his own mother to touch him. Eventually it worked out and he took to his mother again. But who knows what kind of psychological wound that would make him a small child. And the nice quote that i had from her at the time she said they took us away from our children and separated us from our families and i will never forget. It was only for working and they treated it as a crime. And so one of the things ive learned from all three of these people was that it was really difficult for them to be in the Detention Center. Thats when i started hearing about detention in arizona. It wasnt just the harshness or the confinement, omar was very athletic guy he was a star Soccer Player in high school and all three of those kids have High School Diplomas from schools in tucson. The confinement was difficult, the harsh treatment by the guards come of the abusive language. The two things they said that bothered him the most were being treated like a criminal and these were people that had always lived good lives and had worked hard and could be treated and it was just very omar went into a depression and it was really overwhelming. But apart from that vein that was the worst from them was the separation from their families as well as their children. So i decided for my next book to try to look into the Detention Centers. And i will give you a quick background. You know ellis island is sort of like is hollow place and we think of it as we look warmly at photographs, how charming it is to see the ancestors going in with their suitcases down the ramp. But it was a Detention Center. There was another one in california called angel island. And it was on the west coast and adult with immigrants from asia. And ellis island operated from 1892 through 1954 and angel island operated from 1910 through 1940. But the United States eventually moved away from the concept of having Detention Centers and the old immigration and Naturalization Services which preceded the department of Homeland Security in 1954 when they closed ellis island a sad the dataset we are pretty much going out of the Detention Center business, we will have some things that cannot be resolved in other ways but basically they would not do anything to imprison large numbers of people. The Supreme Court in 1958, the justice wrote that physical detention of aliens is now the exception. Certainly this policy reflects human qualities of an enlightened civilization. So the Supreme Court was applauding this development in the step forward in our moral development as a nation. That lasted for about 22 years and it kind of changed in the face of 125000 individuals some of you may not even know about that episode in american history. When it was in 1980 all of these people fled fidel castro, there was a flotilla of boats him it was last year of the jimmy carter administration. People were overwhelmed, the feeling about him was that castro had released a lot of criminals from his jail they didnt want him going out into america. They had to quickly detain very large numbers of people and they did the makeshift things putting them into old prison. Some of them were able to find i was able to find on my Online Research from at least a thousand of them are held in atlanta for five years and this is without trial. So this really was the beginning thenpresident reagan got in when we had the haitian hope that people who must was probably agree that they were fleeing political oppression reagan ruled them to be economic migrants and so they were not allowed to get asylum and then he really started constructing the detention system as we know it. And then after that the imf published new rules saying that detention would be a rule and not the exception. We are reversing the decision of 30 years for. So at that point he moved on to Start Building the Detention Centers that we are going to need from then on. Interestingly that happened in 1982 and the Corrections Corporation in america which was profiting by holding yolanda the very next year they were popularizing not only on the new boom but also to private prisons and criminal convicts. You may not know that. And a lot of them in the United States are also run by private corporations and this is just one of their many businesses. And so i think what is interesting about immigration today and speaking about ellis island is the masses numbers of people coming have triggered a reaction in the. The New York Times is saying that during the ellis island period for about 20 years we got 20 Million People. And im sorry during the heyday of the ellis island period, 20 Million People came to the United States. That was pretty massive in 40 years. In recent times in this new migration we had 20 Million People coming in 20 years. So it is disruptive to some people, disruptive to all kinds of systems and there has been a response to that large number of immigrants coming into the United States that i wanted to show you these pictures by comparison, pictures of immigrants today and you know this picture shows men waited for asylum in that room and this is another picture with some immigrants in an evangelical preacher, i witnessed this event on a very sorrowful occasion people need to understand the detainees can be imprisoned for years. Because they can keep the case on someone in like one man was in detention for seven years. He eventually did get out. But as i said this massive influx of immigrants triggered a massive response and reagan was right on top of it in 1986 mostly known for giving amnesty also the first law to define certain crimes of deporting people. So that happened. Then in 1986 by a lot of you probably heard a lot illegal Immigration Reform and immigrant responsibility act this is passed by the Republican Congress when clinton was president but the democrats have lost both houses of congress. Until when they brought in the justifications if you are arrested for a crime of moral turpitude, which is very roughly defined, you had to go to detention you are not allowed to wait your case and i can be as small as using it to Panda Express people dead using someone elses id, a prostitution which is the charge that yolanda was eventually charged with that you must go to detention and you have no eligibility. And they also found a lot of them and aggravated felonies even if you are a resident in the United States and immigrant that had gotten appropriate documents, if you did something with a couple of joints of marijuana that was an aggravated felony and for the teenager down the street it was a misdemeanor. And so that new law also helps Detention Centers. So showing you a few of the pictures its very hard for a reporter to get in there, luckily i got in there i went with my friend who took these pictures. It kind of shows you what its like. This is one of four Detention Centers in arizona, one of the biggest in the country, the only one in arizona that hold women in it. And you can see that it looks exactly like a prison. And this is the room where they spend all of their time, the Detention Centers offer no kind of Educational Programs at all or even activities. People tell me that its just so boring in there. And you can be in there for a long time and day in and day out theres hardly anything to do, they have two tvs in the game room, one in spanish and one in english, but it costs you 25 to get your phones to listen to it. And so again, a closeup of this. I like this picture because it shows the women sitting there with nothing to do in that puzzle was kind of a sad puzzle because it shows wilderness and wideopen spaces for people that are locked out. This is a picture of womens bedrooms the toilet is right in the middle of the room and thats not in the picture, which is really a prisonlike way. The thing about these detainees while they are being held they are not being charged with crimes they have taken care of criminal stuff. They are theyre only there to be held four detention hearings and they are no longer being held for criminal reasons. And yet this building is actually a former prison that was converted to a detention facility in and this whole idea that you are confined their and the toilet in the room is really harsh and undignified for people it shows you how prisonlike the conditions are, you see that across the window, that is actually blackout pink. And only in the womens room do they have that because they said so they cant look outside when they are locked up. And he said some women were exposing themselves to men from the windows. And as a result all womens windows are blacked out at all times. So that seems pretty harsh. And this is another thing that shows you how rough the conditions are this woman is one of the lowest level detainees and you can tell by the color of her clothing. One reason it looks better than some of the others as they do have an outdoor yard where they are allowed to go everyday. And i love arizona theres the mountains and that just seems like okay, maybe we can deal with this, we are allowed to go outside every day. But interestingly these Detention Centers theres about 250 around the United States and they are all really different and its an amazing hodgepodge of private prisons county jail lockups, and theyre only a few that are owned and operated by i. C. E. And theres one in arizona that i visited. They have a liberal visiting policy families can visit all day long. They can go outside of when they want. The men can go out and play basketball or soccer, whatever they feel like, theres a library. But the other ones are on their own. One of the ones in arizona that closed last summer, this county jail, it was named one of the 10 worst in the United States because they never let detainees outside. They were never allowed outside and that is a violation. The criminal defendants who were housed elsewhere or were allowed outside from the way they got around the rule is they had sort of large rule of stairs with a window across the top that had no glass in it but it had kind of a real and there was error. You can picture your own High School Gym with one window up there and thats the only way that they ever got fresh air and the man who is there who had been in detention for seven years, he said when they had periods, that was a recreation they were sent there. And the son came down in a single ray of light and it shifted during the course of the hour and the men would take turns sitting in that beam of light for a few minutes and thats the only time that they got in the sunlight. Except when they were being brought to court. And there were a lot of other complaints about that as well. They did not allow family visits, my description of her visit is horrible, but at least the families could be there together in that jail. But in that jail they couldnt even have an inperson visit. When i visited marco there it was a junky old computer video thing and he was about this big and the sound was really horrible. So when the families traveled long distances to visit their loved ones that is what they got is this little image. So im glad to say that that person was shut down. It still operates as a county jail, but i. C. E. Has concentrated away from them. So we still have four in arizona they all have very limited family visiting. The other side is the deportations. Many of those Detention Centers are ultimately deported. By the year 2011 there were 429,000 people deported. So we are up to huge numbers of deportees. What has changed in the clinton administration, we had more than a Million People being removed and that was much less consequential in legal terms there were no legal terms, there is no criminal impact and when you are formally deported it becomes a felony if you try to get back. Like he was talking about he would have a petty criminal price to pay and all of that activity obviously has militarized the border and we are getting people across the border. And there are all kinds of lethal weapons this picture was actually taken by a then they were scared and they heard some noise and they both shot. And you know, its a terrible thing, but that young man you also wonder and they think it is a migrant or maybe they could have shot some local teenagers. But theres a huge presence in arizona and the laws had also strengthened the Police Powers strengthening those that can report to border control. But there is this whole hundred mile limit from the border where they are allowed to stop people and people like me just driving up and down the road, check points and they are allowed to do it and one agent said to me that the constitution is within a hundred miles of the border. And you all know about the hardware that has gone up Coronado National monument they walked in through their. Its interesting when you go down and see it, it really is one place. And there is this wall through it. And this is the reservation and you can see close up how difficult and deadly the desert can be and over there its called vehicle barriers and its like a nation that shares 75 miles of borders 75 miles with mexico and they have told the government that over there over my dead body, that is what the chairman says, we be able to separate the traditional landscape of my ancestors because traditionally and they have gone as far as allowing this to stop the cars. And because its a very remote spot many walked through their and their deportees trying to get back. And for years it was the deadliest quarter in the nation. But for those of you that follow it, this is coming up fast and this is another picture of Border Patrol performing a rescue. And they do have this fourstar unit with highly Trained Medical people. And they do save lives. How am i doing on time . Okay because i do want to do this. This is what the border looks like today between arizona and mexico. We had a big fence and its also on the cover of my book. Its about 16 feet high and it is pretty much impregnable. It used to be an old fans. It was sheetmetal. And the Border Patrol is always patching it. One thing that is really interesting to me about it i went down there to write about it and what did i see but just east of the Border Crossing families visiting. Because now they can see each other. And they wanted to see who was on the other side and who might be time to come over with unintended consequences, families now visit regularly and i was present. And the little boy was handing his paper to his father and so i asked about that the Border Patrol i asked them about it not that i was doing anything away and they said that we are aware of that but we are supposed to transfer things through the Border Crossings and they would certainly get in trouble if they were passing drugs. It felt like they were just staying away. And you care about people and couples. And this is where i met a lot of people in my book, its run by this order of mexican nuns and they run a special shelter for women who are traumatized and i had the opportunity to go there one day and they had been terrorized trying to cross the border into of them were mothers with children on the other side and they have been caught by Border Patrol and they had traveled on a hot time of year. And there they were and they said how can across that desert again, it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. And so that is what this organization does. The migrants can go there two times per day they can get a hot meal. And theyre all of the services that have sprung up. And this was just another picture of the people. All people have human rights. Its a very good enterprise but probably those students. So i just want to finish up with a story from my book. One of the more tragic cases sort of gives you the feel of what its like to be deported and what that does to families. And this is a chapter that i call woman without a country. One block from the border wall in the gritty border town of a lot you can see the wall in the background. They were reveling in a holiday atmosphere. It is a term or 12 2012 just three days before the Independence Day celebrations. And thanks sprouted everywhere including colorful paper flowers and families, husbands and wives and grandfathers and grandmothers, they were getting the celebration started early in the middle of the workday. One carried her baby granddaughter and the babys eyes popped at the site of the three bright yellow birds fluttering in the sky. Angelina santiago you seen the pictures seem to be the only one. She looked down at her slice of birthday cake and smiled and it was just about the best thing that had happened. Her american friends immigrant advocates, were trying to cheer her up. Her 40 are they had been two days before and they had conspired to deliver a cake to the table. They had even ducked out into the crowd to buy candles for the surprise fiesta. The waiter lit all of the six candles and lena blew out the flames. And every time they blew a candle out theyve put it back on. And the moment of levity was brief. They ventured away from her parents to take a look at the fluttering birds. The little girl was wearing a jumper and her School Uniform and her black hair was pulled into great detail down her back. She bent down and grinned showing the gap where her teeth should have been. And a lena looked over at the happy child and then turned away. Tears filled her eyes. She had two kids of her own. Avoid it was 15 years old and this little boy that was just two years old. They were from phoenix come out of her reach. And she hadnt seen either of the children in almost a year. Since the day she was dumped down here over the border in mexico. And it was the third of November November 2011 she said that i smack into my house, they didnt come inside. It was a school day and she was up early in her rental home, getting her family ready for the day. She had her job to get to and little camille would tag along with her mom to work. And as a single working mom she had to feed the pets and the family had a menagerie of animals, two dogs and cats and turtles, i bought them for my kids i had a big yard. And when she went out back she had heard odd noises coming from the front of the house and she came back in and when she was dipped into her jacket she opened the front door and saw what she most feared, it put to device agents armed and ominous outside. A fleet of Law Enforcement vehicles and they close the street like i was a criminal, she said. Trembling at the memory. There were a lot of cars and a lot of asians. Alina was terrified that she buckled her toddler into the car seat and she and her son went on. At the moment she started to get behind the wheel, an agent called out her name over a megaphone broadcast airing for all to hear alina santiago, alina santiago. And the officers came over and handcuffed her and then marcher over one of their suvs. Seeing her mother in the hands of the police. The police turn on their car radios and inside the suv over the radio blaring and the kids screaming the officers started asked questions. Are you pregnant. Are you sick taking medicine. Then they said who you going to leave your kids with. And she had no one that could help her. Her mother was dead. The kids fathers were out of the picture and she had only one real friend one that was not in a position to take in the kids. So they call the called Child Protective Services and the agency that normally takes abused and neglected children and put them into foster care. In short order a woman arrived and said would you like to sign your children over to us she asked. And i said yes, temporarily she recounted. On with the document, the worker turned to the kids. Always an attentive big brother he climbed into the van. In that moment of seeing her children taken from her, she suddenly remembered the family pets. And i said what about my dogs. My dogs are going to die. And the agent turned to her and sneered and says who cares about the dogs. And a lena trembled. She said it was also my kid and animals 10 months later she had no idea what had become of the dogs and cats and turtles and not to mention the families like tonics and card. The family divided into two vehicles went their separate ways. And elena watchband disappear into the distance. She had not even been around to say goodbye. And at the i. C. E. Lockup, two officers tried to talk her into signing an order of deportation and she knew better than to agree to be deported far from her kids and she refused again and again. And i kept saying that im not going to sign. Frustrated the agents took matters into her own hands literally. And one man pulled her arm behind her back and the other grabbed her right. And the other guy forced me, she said demonstrating how the agent coerced her into making a fingerprint on the paper. The equivalent of the signature. She said they made me sign. And now the agents of the u. S. Government had everything they needed to deported from the country where she had lived since she was a young teenager. And away from the country where she had given birth to her two children. And within hours i smacked her on a bus headed for the mexican border. Three hours and 180 miles later she walked south over the line with other deportees and pass the border wall and into mexico, a country where she had not set foot in 27 years. She would get no news of her children per month. And so just to tell you a little bit about her case that was in 2012 when i first met her. And she has not seen her son sends and we are getting onto it happened three years since she has seen him. And only because she ran into some activists, one of the groups that comes down to help migrants was she even able to get in touch with them. Because they gave her a phone number and every time she called it when she had the opportunity to call she of course did not get a human being. So they took her in hand they helped her and that woman was able to track down the kids and she reestablished telephone contact with them. But the little girl was only two years old and three years old and federal law wires that you have to move quickly for adoption of children for that age. So the state of arizona moved her parental rights on the ground that she was not available to take care of her child and the reason she wasnt available was because the United States had deported her and there were no accusations of her being a bad mother anything like that at all. So that was fairly precarious for a while it looked like maybe it was going to happen. But eventually she got the little girl tack. And they had been apart for 14 months. I was there and i witnessed the reunion and the little girl was two years old when she was taken away she was three when she got back. Its a happy thing when the mother and child are be cannot do it. But as one of the activists said later she said by the time the mother and child were reunited they didnt even speak the same language. The child had been placed in an englishspeaking home. Who knows about the psychic damage to that child and i havent talked to them in a long time, but she is still down there and theyre some hope of her getting into the United States. Somebody actually got a visa and is working very hard but she was never able to prove who she was in mexico. She had no idea she was born in mexico city, 42 43 years ago but a very poor person among the masses of her people in mexico and she was never able to come up with any documents are proof for the government that she was who she said she was in the United States wont let her cross the border without that mexican passport. So she is literally a loan in another country and also without her son. So thats all i have for you today. Happy to take questions. [applause] and we do have a mic. If anybody wants to ask a question. Hi i want to thank you for coming today. I am from the phoenix area and i was wondering when i talk to arizona a lot of it, its a federal issue and that is why they dont take a stance on it and i was wondering being in office have you seen or heard of any action on the other side i guess coming from the state level . I dont see 1070 being repealed but are there any statewide initiatives in congress that would want to support and active citizenship . Yeah while the dispute between the state and federal government goes back to the civil war. The federal government was not doing its job and they were just obeying federal law by creating a law because 1070 would allow them to enforce federal law. Our federal law the federal government was not that they lost in the Supreme Court and the those most of the provisions at 1070 were turned over. If an officer stops a person for another reason that he or she can stop a person if they say that looks like a mexican or oh i heard them speaking spanish. That is illegal. They have to have a criminal reason to stop them and then upon investigation if the person raises suspicions that they might not be here legally than they are required to call Border Patrol or i. C. E. So thats the status of things now. I have a whole chapter in this book and analysis and what we hear a lot is in the initial crime if the taillight is out or somebody went over the speed limit, i talk to a woman the other day who was driving to a construction site and all the orange cons and she got confused so she veered in one direction and she wasnt supposed to. The sheriffs deputies were right there. They stopped her in said hey you are in the writing lane. I dont have a license. Give me your Social Security card. I dont have it and then they call Border Patrol. So the question is whether they stop for pretext which i think theres a lot of evidence to show that they are pretext but they have to have something without but thats a risk. The new governor ducey is even more to the right than governor jan brewer. He has just increased his budget for persons in arizona and pretty much decimated the University Budget on a technicality from the mayor. The only things specifically that has happened with immigration since he has been in office is you know the docket kids you all know what daca is . Preferred action for childhood arrival some of these kids who were brought here as children and have graduated from preschool and they get permission to stay for two years. In every state except for arizona and nebraska State Government has accepted that. They have permission to stay and they issue them state drivers licenses. Brewer phot and fought back. The previous government denied the license is two dreamers who are not here legally. This is not permission to stay and she kept losing in the courts. Eventually they did start getting the licenses just a few months ago but now the state has appealed and ducey said he is going to continue that to try to make sure that these kids cant drive. I think you probably know if you have had an opportunity i dont see the remaining piece of s. B. 1070 being appealed unless a case is brought under conscious discrimination like this whole thing about the taillights in certain neighborhoods. Evidence is accumulating that the police go in certain neighborhoods where youd be more likely to find undocumented workers and stop them for a taillight. Anybody else . Wait for the microphone. Theres a theme in much of your book with stories about children who came to United States in the very young age and a bin family members often parents being deported. Can you talk a little bit about i think the last chapter in your book which is dedicated to those that were brought here . You know via decision that the parents made to bring them here to improve their lives and what some of the issues are in california and arizona and across the country. You have probably been aware that the young dreamers are very savvy. They are very savvy young activists and they are very good with media. They are very good with social media and they get a lot of attention for their cause. One of the stories that they mention a young woman adriana who i met and now follows, the story about her is the most disturbing to me. She had been brought to United States when she was 1 monthold by her mother. They lived peacefully in phoenix. She didnt even know she was undocumented. A lot of a lot of times that families dont talk about it. She didnt the take her kids to disneyland and i stayed home a lot and it wasnt until she got a little older and she would see these raids by sheriff arpaio on television. Arpaio was careful about bringing those tv cameras and a very telegenic kind of thing. She started realizing that they were on documented. I guess the mother must have finally told her when she was a young teenager. So she goes to high school. Shes a good student and shes the valedictorian of her High School Rate airs on unlike many states in the nation does not allow instate tuition for dreamers. Its gotten very expensive. Arizonians to have the state universities would be as near to free as possible but no longer. I think its about 10,000 for instate residents and for outofstate its well over 20,000. So just out of sight for her. And Community Colleges also were not allowed to charge instate tuition. This girl wanted to go to college and she got very bad advice advice from High School Principal who said you should just go back to mexico. They have very nice universities there. Just go there. They didnt look into beforehand and i dont know exactly what happened but she just got that advice. She and her mother left phoenix where they had lived for years went down to mexico city in total chaos. The bureaucracy and the Mexican University said we need signed documents from you and your high school and they had to go back and get it to get the documents prove that you ever want to high school. She exhausted every possibility. Then i thought at least they could good enough collis. I would be close now gaullist. She and her mother were working in a migrant shelter that houses people for three days and a migrant couple rented and theyre allowed to stay there. So these people were very kind to adriana and her mom and allowed her to stay. They couldnt find any work and they were getting more and more desperate. Eventually adriana was contacted by a young man named mohammed somebody who was very active with the dreamers. He said we are going to do an action. We are going to get 12 dreamers and we are all going to wear a graduation gowns and caps and you had to be a High School Graduate to be in this docket category and we are going to march up to the border gates and you have to ask for permission to come home from the United States. As i said they are very media savvy. It was a huge media event and they marched through nogales singing in the crowd came in various clergys from tucson accompany them to the gates. Of course they were arrested and they asked for permission to go. They were all brought in but its very interesting the effect publicity has obvious cases. There are lots of people in the same situation. They were released within three weeks or so bonded out with the ability to take their deportation cases cases elsewhere. The last time i talked to were she said i live in phoenix and im not allowed to work. Im not allowed to drive because she cant get a drivers license and her mother is in nogales so they are separated. The mother was happy that at least her mother mother got back in and the irony of her story is she totally would have wohlsifer daca if they had not left and after a few months she loves. She was down in mexico city having this frustrating experience. Obama makes this announcement and you had to be in the United States right now on this day in order to apply for daca and she was in mexico on this failed mission. So thats a really sad story. Real quickly one of the dreamer story i have been there about a family that came to the United States with one daughter when she was 1yearold and they had another daughter two years later later. They raised these two little girls and a loving family and the two girls were always treated equally. They want to very good schools and they were very good student and again the older girl didnt know she was undocumented because they were always treated alike until she got to high school. She found out she was not allowed to drive. All her friends were getting their licenses and her sister got her license and that was upsetting for her. She couldnt go to college. Her family couldnt afford it. They did manage to scrape together the money for Community College. She went there. That was a twoyear program and her sister like any bright Young American kid she got her drivers license and then she got a scholarship from the university of arizona. She was a double major in linguistics and psychology and then she got a great job working on some kind of research projects. Shed recently just got her graduate ph. D. Her sister went two years to Community College and shes a waitress. So within that one family is see this real disparity of opportunity and the mother who is the one i talked to feel terribly guilty. The older daughter is like i cant go back to mexico. This is my country and i live here. So its very tragic. Im a clinical graduate student in psychology here at weil and you talk about the impact that detention and deportation have on these families and you talk a little bit about trauma. I was wondering if you have looked into the psychological impact on the families . I havent personally. I am just taking them for what they say but im sure there must be studies going on right now because so many of what they call these mixed families where some people are documented and some people arent. A social worker researcher presented a paper in tucson a couple of years ago. I could probably find that title for you if your adjusted. Id might have it in my bibliography but if such a prevalent issue. After this great migration people have been here for a long time and for many families there were strange disparities in legal status. [inaudible] we do research on immigrant families and we have started to look into immigration and mental health. I know there are certainly lots of immigrants in chicago. Ive met a lot of people there who were from chicago. A lot of times they go home to visit. They have lived here for many years and they want to go home and see their elderly parents in mexico and they get stuck on the way back. They say years ago this would have been a crime and now it isnt. So there would be a fruitful supply of people if you did a study and on chicago. I just want to say thank you. You have written stories of many immigrants but once the immigrant in the second part is i came here because of the work and what was going on at that time it in the 80s. There were many many immigrants and refugees that came because of our involvement in not only speaking on behalf of both human rights literally. So i work for Centro Romero and we serve a lot of immigrants that you have talked about. We hear the stories. They have served the most the second most Daca Dreamers than any institution in chicago. You can hear the stories and thats part of our story. So its one part but the message with your book is also the impact not only the family hasnt the kids but also how we as an advocate have a relationship to that. And what is the next step . It impacts all of us. I dont know if everybody in the room has known someone who has been undocumented. I think we all have but now what do we do . Its good to know the history and impact in who did what and how they came to be how do you begin to write the story . How did you get inspired . Oh i thought you were going to ask me what the solution was. I always tell personal stories about how i first got involved with immigration. I was very close to my father who was very proud of his irish heritage. He was the grandson of irish immigrants and had a very tough time in the United States and died young and left my father an orphan. That was part of my family story growing up. Iis wanted to hear about it so when he died in 1999 i wrote a story about him for my paper. I looked into it and it was really fun for me because i was able to confirm these oral histories and records. So i wrote this whole story about the difficulties of the average migration of the downs through the generations what happened. A few months after wrote that story which as you can imagine was very emotional for me to write i went down to the border for the first time to report on the border. I went to douglas arizona to write about it in my first book. That was the first summer. It was the summer of 2000 that we first started hearing about the death. He was not a common thing in a arizona before that. We didnt have that many migrants because it was dangerous with the desert. A federal policy had sealed off the crossings in el paso and san diego with the idea that if you sealed those crossings immigration would stop because the geographer in between was so forbidding that nobody would come. What we were finding was people were coming to arizona anyway and they were starting to die in large numbers for the first time. So i went to report on that and i went to douglas arizona which in the summer of 2000 was the immigration highway. It was a lifechanging experience for me. I saw the helicopters everywhere. I couldnt drive on the roads without seeing a rest. Some poor guy sort of a tubby man and they had a plane after him. It looks like somebody was probably coming to chicago to be a bus boy or something, not like a criminal. So was like walking into a war zone. Its two hours from where i lived and during that visit i also had the opportunity to sit with the man whose own cousin had died in his arms that day. They were indigenous water mall and and a man who died was 23 years old after just a few hours in the desert very healthy young man. So its a very overwhelming experience. But i do remember on the long drive home i was thinking a lot about my father and i had just immersed myself in the difficulties of the irish immigrants and all i could think was is this is the same story. This is the same story different century, different people but its people that are coming here mostly out of desperation and they are being refiled and treated badly with many bad results. So that impressed upon me so much and he gave me a personal connection to the story. After that that was always what i wanted to write about. I dont know, somehow this book was even harder to write maybe because a lot of people i wrote about were dead. I talked to others but these were people who were having ongoing difficulties with the separation specifically from their children. That was a very difficult thing to write but i always feel like that is what i can do. I dont really have a solution to it i was afraid you were going to ask me but my job is to let you all know this is whats going on. Im in a position to tell people that they lived down there and so i can write about it. The other thing about talking to people a psychologist might tell you people in trauma very often want to tell their story and that something that i can offer is an empathetic ear. Its amazing how much people want to say after they have been through something very difficult. And its tricky because you dont want to exploit the person either. So thats what i can do. Margaret what is the response to the crossing of the migrants over their land . Well, its been difficult. They are a very poor really poor reservation. I was there in 1999 so im curious. E yeah. Well the big battle that they have, as i said i dont know how they can really do this but they have forbidden the federal government from building a wall across. They complained a lot. They had all of these traditional crossings. The Border Patrol was always on the case. Thats like occupied country when he dried out there. I havent been there since 89. It Border Patrol everywhere and they resented a lot. They have the migrants. They do. Today complicated issue. In my first book i have a whole chapter about that. There are some people who say it has formed a group called humane borders which puts out tanks of water really like girls. They are very lawabiding this group. They always ask permission of a private landowner government landowner. They try to identify the common migrant trails to put water out there. They have tried and tried to get permission to get the water out there and they have said no, no no. Their feeling is it attracts the migrants. If you put water out there it attracts them. They are very poor. Their Indian Health services very underfunded and they get stuck with a lot of the costs. Its interesting when somebody dies out there and the police find the body its their job to transport the body to tucson to the king county medical examiner. Thats the designated office that receives the bodies and they do an autopsy. If you find a dead person they have to do these autopsies. And then they build a couple thousand dollars. We are already strapped. Very little employment and then there are all these people coming through. There are incidents among the Indian Tribes and i wrote extensively about one man named mike wilson who is a tribal member. A very interesting guy. He was special forces in guatemala a young man in the military. He said he was making up for what he would did. He was also religious and became a presbyterian lehman. He defied the tribe actively. For years he had put the Water Bottles out there anyway and give the tank. He had a couple of tanks out there on the act of migrant trails and people would shoot the tanks and they would have to replace them. There have been various episodes episodes. He sponsors a lot of students. One day the tribe came and kicked out 22 seminarians from denver and gave them a lifetime ban on coming to the nation. So its usually a complicated thing. A very sad case. The indigenous people. Right bait you can also see how stressed they are. Its extremely complicated. Margaret thank you so much for opening up our hearts and minds to a very localized part of our country where our National Values are in conflict. I would just like to make a comment that the localized position that you spoke about his only a microcosm. A huge number of refugees around the world. We know there are over 57 million refugees, people without access to their own country right now in the world. And so if we look at what 57 Million People, what that would look like that chicago and new york, mexico city rome the populations of all the major cities in the world almost. And so my question is when do we begin as a global family to embrace strangers as brothers and sisters . Rather than continuing to exist in the xenophobic sinful kind of man are . A horrible question. What will it take to change . We were talking earlier about what happened last summer when all those women and children were coming through. A lot of them werent tucson. I went down to the bus station one night and they were like 90 mothers and babies and children. Some of the activists are upset characterized mostly as unaccompanied minors. There were many many more families and mothers accompanying their children. Our definition of unaccompanied is who i met a woman who had her sisters children with her in florida. She was responsible and i. C. E. Took them away from her because she wasnt the mother. And children are redefined as unaccompanied minors. Certainly there were children who came along and many more became his parents but the reaction to that these are basically the refugee people coming from what is really a war zone in terms of the drugs and the murders and rapes and the stories of people had. Guatamala turns out has the highest murder rate in the nation. A lot of them were guatemalan and a response to that was look at these filthy diseased children. It reminded me of the 19th century. A jehovahs witness came to my door and i always talk to those people. She asked me and she said i heard on the radio. [inaudible] and im like really . We had an episode, a wellpublicized one in california where the local residents came screaming at the mothers and children. We had an episode like that in tucson. Word got out that i. C. E. Was going to breathe bringing some of the children tunneled summercamp that could house them. Whether that was true or not was not determined that everybody came out. They were going to turn the bus away. Although the activists came and everybody was there saying go back to your own country. You are not wanted here. And the activists would have big banners you know so the only bus that never showed up and everybody converged on the bus. The school bus with little kids on their way to a ymca summer camp. I thought that was very revealing. Again is like lowe these are our kids. What does that tell you . They were upset that they had scared their own local children. One of the things that i am concerned about is i have set a lot of them were applying for asylum. The process has not been running smoothly and you probably know that theres a new corporation in america, Detention Center specifically open for mothers and children. They are doubling their rates they are paying for wall onto. 124 dollars a day. This new mother and child is 300 a day. They have to provide services for children and there were reports that there was a Hunger Strike a couple of weeks ago. So instead of getting as they say to apply for their asylum papers they are putting these women and children in prisons. So yeah. We had in chicago trying to open a flight for these kids in chicago. We talk to the mayor about it and they asked how do you guys feel about it . Of course we had to say how we felt about it. I talked to the mother and the kids and they were detained. The kid was three years old. Of course they cannot care so every time but i had to take them out of my office. The kids were terrified and shaking. And we are talking about three years old. It had such an impact. Other people you think about though they have disease. It really breaks my heart to think about the children. So of course there is so much to do. Thank you. Sure shes an immigrant, who cares so thats a very good thing. I want to say thank you for that. Thanks. Im sorry to put you on the spot in any way but do we have your permission to dramatize some of these stories . Some of the writers here. If i can be the start. You are cast. I think it would be interesting to present. As long as you put my name on it. I have your permission. I just want to say we would love to have your publisher agree. You can write to me. A church in colorado did my last book. It was fun. Thank you so much. I was actually without Justice Group with the dreamers. I was at the station that night in tucson. What i wanted to say was i meant assistant professor and education and i was also an undocumented immigrant. The part of the story that struck me was when he talked about the principal. Its not only bad advice but consequential advice. I teach teacher candidates in chicago and one of my Main Missions in life is to address educators and to train educators around these issues. Not only immigrant miners that immigrant families. What happens as you know thats bad advice is not just bad advice. Its lifealtering talk that happens so im wondering a lot of my work is around that. So i wondered if you have any thoughts around that, working with educators and if it has been effective . Not really. Thats the only story i heard about. He says this to her casually. Apparently he did not look it up. Its hard for me to understand how it responds a person responsible for teenagers to do that. I dont know, i mean i dont know how much consciousness there is among teachers. In a place like tucson obviously many of the children are documented in i have to say our schools do a great job. Ive never noticed reports. There was one episode in tucson some years ago where a kid got in trouble in the classroom and somehow the whole family got deported the next day. The district pledged after that they would never do that again. They took the parents and arrested them. Your kid is in trouble at school and they drove to school to get the kids little brother and deported them. I would say that was pretty major misstep but in general i think theyre pretty good. I really dont know what sort of training they have. That would be a fruitful avenue for you to investigate. Thank you. In the interest of time i just want to thank you for coming and sharing your stories with us. And to follow up on the other comments. Its important to tell the stories were to have done so beautifully so we are not hearing about alien statistics Illegal Migrants and these words that cannot other groups that personalize this that help others to help them for thought empathize with this event family issued and an issue of human rights and thats incredibly important that i hope that motivates us in this room. Our scholars are activists and Service Writers faculty and administrators to do more to reflect and think about what we can do and we can all walk away with a short if not longer list of things to do. So thank you very much. Appreciate it. [applause] [inaudible conversations]