SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA.– Jesus Mendez, a young dreamer living along the California border, recently told Congressional leaders that dreamers who live near the border are most at risk of deportation.
“Because deportation can occur in as little as an hour,” Mendez warned lawmakers.
“One in five dreamers in the country lives in a border county with Mexico. We must remember that the authorities have all of our confidential information” he said in his testimony. Information that many congressmen had not considered.
On February 17 of last year, Juan Manuel Montes was stopped by border patrol as he walked down a street in the city of Calexico, California, about 120 miles east of San Diego. Montes wasn’t carrying his identification at the time. In just a few hours he was deported to Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico.
“For dreamers living along the border, it’s urgent Congress pass the DREAM Act,” which would lead to permanent legal residency.
When Congress invited a delegation of dreamers living along the California border to testify, Jesus Mendez, was included without hesitation. In San Diego County alone there are 40 thousand-dreamers, according to the organization Alliance San Diego.
“It’s hard to keep up hope for passage of a DREAM Act, but I am hopeful because I’m not the only one being interviewed about the situation of dreamers. I’m also not the only one who talks about these injustices,” Mendez said.
Jesus came to California with his parents in 1998 when he was six years old. He was born in Acapulco, Mexico but grew up in Coyuca de Benitez, also in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero.
He began to define himself as a youth leader in San Diego County before the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program or DACA was started.
As a member of the Youth Coalition of San Diego Mendez began to stand out for his courage during his middle and high school years.
He led a rally in front of the San Diego police department while the group chanted “undocumented, unafraid”. He has also read his own bilingual poems on immigration issues he has found himself in. The poems were well received.
Over time organizations like the Southern Border Communities Coalition, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Alliance San Diego began to invite him to participate in rallies and press conferences.
He graduated with a degree in Chicano Studies from San Diego State University (SDSU) in May 2016 and has applied to start a master’s degree program in social work or counseling, “because I am very interested in mental health in general but especially in mental health and undocumented immigrants,” he said.
Mendez believes living as an undocumented immigrant has an effect on mental health, “it is a big problem that’s ignored or people are afraid to talk about, but it is something immigrants live with day to day.”
Meanwhile, the struggle remains the same, to convince Congress to pass the Dream Act and “not militarize the border” Mendez said.
The dreamer gave his interview to Inmigración.com when President Donald Trump first began speaking of a solution to DACA but requiring an initial budget of 18 billion dollars to build a new border wall and funds to hire more immigration enforcement officers.
Jesus Mendez said that President Trump “Thinks with a physical barrier, people will stop crossing. But if as long as there’s hunger, as long as there’s injustice in different countries around the world, people will keep crossing. “
For reasons like these “people will try to cross even if it costs them their lives, and that’s what (President Trump) does not understand or does not want to understand,” Mendez said.
Lea esta historia en español, “Los dreamers de la frontera corren más riesgo de ser deportados“.