A UNM graduate student is fighting to complete his master’s degree after he was deported in August.Immigration offcials arrested student “Juan Santiago” on campus this summer, Santiago said.
Santiago requested his name be changed to avoid repercussions as he tries to return to America.
Enrique Lamadrid, chairman of Spanish and Portuguese, said Santiago is not the only student who left UNM because of deportation issues. He said Santiago and another graduate student would have been teaching assistants this fall.
“We lost two graduate students in the Spanish department to deportationor threat of deportation,” Lamadrid said. “ ey were going to teach a total of 100 students. e ripple effects of this are bigger than might be first evident.”
Santiago said he got an undergraduate degree in University Studies from UNM and was halfway through his graduate degree in Spanish. He wanted to become a teacher in the U.S. or Canada.
After emigrating from Mexico when he was 16, Santiago said he bought a birth certificate so he could drive with a license. He planned to move with his wife and
brother to Canada after finishing a Ph.D. at UNM, he said. He applied for a passport with the birth certificate he bought, and, shortly after, immigration officials showed up at UNM to arrest him.
“They found out about the fraud, and that was the reason why the State Department went to UNM to deport me,” Santiago said. “They didn’t put me in prison because my record was clean, but they took me straight to immigration in El Paso and they took me to Juarez, where I currently live.”
Lamadrid said UNM is working with legislators to make an agreement with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement so officials don’t arrest students on campus. Albuquerque Public Schools have already adopted this policy.
Students being scared to come
to school because they might be deported
contributes to drop out rates,
Lamadrid said.
“We recognize (ICE has) the right to enforce the laws of this country.
We’re not contesting that,” he said. “They know where these people live in many cases, so why do they have to come to school? Deportation and fear of deportation are real concerns on the UNM campus.”
Santiago said the moment he was arrested on campus was shocking. “I have no idea why they went to UNM — they didn’t tell me why. They were just waiting outside of Ortega Hall to arrest me,” Santiago
said.
Lamadrid said UNM should be a place where students can get an education without worrying about ICE arresting them.
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Patricia Lopategui, professor of Spanish and Portuguese, said ICE shouldn’t arrest students on campus because they are there to learn.
“Students should be protected in a place that is devoted to knowledge and becoming better human beings,” she said. “They way they took him — like a criminal — and not letting him go back to his house to take care of his business there, I think
that is awful. It speaks very badly about human rights in the U.S.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t define when or where officials can arrest undocumented immigrants, according to the ICE Web site.
“Simply stated, DRO’s (Office of Detention and Removal) ultimate goal is to develop the capacity to identify and remove all removable aliens,” the site said.
Lopategui said Santiago was in three of her classes, and he was one of her best students.
“He was always so interested in all of the subjects,” Lopategui said. “He is a native speaker, of course, so he was more skilled with the language, but he never acted arrogant.
He was always there with his classmates to help when they were struggling with the class.”
Lamadrid said Santiago will probably get to complete his master’s at UNM. He said classes at a university in Juarez will allow Santiago get most of the credits he needs.
“We actually figured out a way to transfer courses and we’re hoping he can finish it, even though he can’t be physically here,” Lamadrid said.
