Seven people were arrested in Phoenix after they blocked a van carrying a woman who might be deported under President Trump's clampdown on undocumented migrants.
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PHOENIX — For eight years, Guadalupe García de Rayos had checked in at the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement office here, a requirement since she was caught using a fake Social Security number during a raid in 2008 at a water park where she worked.
Every year since then, she has walked in and out of the meetings after a brief review of her case and some questions.
But not this year.
On Wednesday, immigration agents arrested Rayos, 35, and began procedures to send her back to Mexico, a country she has not seen since she left it 21 years ago.
As a van carrying Rayos left the ICE building, protesters were waiting. They surrounded it, chanting, "Liberation, not deportation." Her daughter, Jacqueline, joined in, holding a sign that read, "Not one more deportation." One man, Manuel Saldana, tied himself to one of the van's front wheels and said, "I'm going to stay here as long as it takes."
Soon, police officers in helmets had surrounded Saldana. They cut off the ties holding him to the wheel and rounded up at least six others who were blocking the front and back of the van, arresting them all. The driver quickly put the van in reverse and rolled back into the building.
Rayos was one of several detainees inside the van. It was unclear whether officials planned to take them to Mexico or to detention.
Rayos was arrested just days after the Trump administration broadened the definition of "criminal alien," a move that immigrants' rights advocates say could easily apply to a majority of unauthorized immigrants in the United States.
"We're living in a new era now, an era of war on immigrants," Rayos' lawyer, Ray A. Ybarra Maldonado, said Wednesday after leaving the building here that houses the federal immigration agency, known by its acronym, ICE.
The Obama administration made a priority of deporting people who were deemed a threat to safety, had ties to gangs or had committed serious felony offenses or a series of misdemeanor crimes. Rayos did not fit any of these criteria, which is why she was allowed to stay in the U.S. even after a judge issued a deportation order against her in 2013.
That all changed under President Donald Trump. Among the 18 executive orders that he has issued since taking office Jan. 20 is one stipulating that unauthorized immigrants convicted of any criminal offense — and even those who have not been charged but are believed to have committed "acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense" — have become a priority for deportation.
Yasmeen Pitts O'Keefe, a spokeswoman for ICE, said in a statement that Rayos "is currently being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement based on removal order issued by the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review."
Maldonado, Rayos' lawyer, submitted a request for a stay of deportation after her arrest, but the ICE statement made no mention of it or discussed the timing for her deportation.
Lawyers from two of the nation's leading civil rights' groups said Rayos might be the first unauthorized immigrant to be arrested during a scheduled meeting with immigration officials since Trump took office. Thousands of others run a similar risk when they report for their regular immigration checks, in large part because federal agents are now free to decide who is and is not a threat to public safety, those advocates said.
"That is precisely what the alarming problem is with Trump's internal enforcement order," Cecillia Wang, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview Wednesday. Trump, she said, "took the gloves off agents and has permitted these agents to go after immigrants regardless of their ties and contributions to the United States."
Rayos was 14 when she left Acambaro, a city in an impoverished corner of the Mexican state of Guanajuato, and sneaked across the border into Nogales, Arizona, a three-hour drive from Phoenix. She married — her husband is also in the U.S. illegally — and gave birth to a boy and a girl, who are now in their teens.
Before showing up for her appointment with the immigration officials Wednesday morning, Rayos and her family attended Mass. Later, as she entered the gates into the ICE building, she stopped for a moment, clasped her hands and bowed her head, as if she was reciting a silent prayer.
"The only crime my mother committed was to go to work to give a better life for her children," said her daughter, Jacqueline, as Rayos stood by her side before entering the ICE building with her lawyer.
Rayos was working at Golfland Sunsplash in Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix, when Maricopa County sheriff's deputies swooped in on Dec. 16, 2008, arresting her and several other employees on charges of suspicion of identity theft and using forged documents to obtain employment. The raid was one of the first ordered by Joe Arpaio, who was sheriff at the time, under an Arizona law authorizing sanctions against employers who knowingly hired undocumented immigrants.
She spent three months in a county jail, followed by three months in immigration detention, she told a reporter. In 2013, an immigration court ordered that she be sent back to Mexico but her case had been on hold since the federal authorities — under the Obama administration — decided not to act on the deportation order.
Her son, Angel, still remembers the evening of her arrest — the knock on the door, the flashlight on the darkened living room, the sight of handcuffs on his mother's wrists.
"I was in second grade," he said. "I never forgot that night, and I've lived in fear of losing my mother every night since then."
Rayos was also afraid to go to her appointment Wednesday. Carlos Garcia, executive director of Puente, an immigrants' rights group, told her she could skip it and go into hiding or seek refuge at a church in North Phoenix, joining two other unauthorized immigrants facing deportation who have lived there for months.
She decided to face the odds — a risky gamble that was also a statement.
The reason she was arrested was not that she had entered the United States illegally, a civil offense. It was because of her felony conviction for using a phony Social Security number, a common subterfuge by unauthorized immigrants looking to find work in the United States.
"I have faith in God," Rayos said, pinching her forehead and fighting not to cry.
She walked toward the gates that surround the building, followed by Garcia and a small army of Puente volunteers, the same group that staged numerous protests against Arpaio at the height of his pursuit of unauthorized immigrants.
The volunteers chanted, "No estás sola," Spanish for "you are not alone."