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Education Not Deportation

Two dear friends of mine just recently went to Birmingham, Alabama to attend United We Dream’s Southeast Region conference. They are now a part of a team in the S.E that will be heading an E.N.D campaign: Education Not Deportation. The END campaign is a national campaign to  prevent the deportations of young people, thereby allowing immigrant youth to  continue their lives in the United States, pursue higher education and achieve their dreams. My friends have recruited a few of us to work on that team.

A large proponent of the END campaign is figuring out whether or not an immigrant person has deportation orders. Most of the people who have deportation orders do not know that they have deportation orders (yikes). The way we get that information is by getting the person’s “alien number,” if you have had contact with ICE in any way as an immigrant, you will have an “alien number.” We call a number, put that in, and it’ll tell us if the person has court dates they haven’t met, etc. If that person does have deportation orders, the next step is to start on the process of removing those orders. We first start off with filling out a questionnaire with them; we then gather up that information and look for a pro-bono lawyer that will be able to defend the petition. Then we began the process of contacting media (depending on what mode of petition the individual chooses: private, public-private, or full private). After all of that, it’s just a matter of getting people to sign on and because the Dept. of Homeland Security and ICE hate public pressure, they will void the previous deportation orders of that person. It’s shown that the more out undocumented students are, the safer they are. These campaigns have been 100% effective and it’s just a matter of finding people and talking to them.

SO HERE IS THE PART THAT IS SUPER SUPER IMPORTANT: PLEASE REBLOG THIS.

In two weeks, one of our team members is going to DC to receive more training on the campaign. Between now and then (and even afterward) we are trying to get more cases because we know they’re out there! Right now we have 6 cases, 2 of which we have started on and belong to two brothers. We want to extend our reach and make it clear that the issue of deportation is not a Latin@ exclusive issue: even though our government is a nasty monster (in addition to media) exploiting the identities of Latin@ individuals.

If you are worried that you may have deportation orders, if you are unsure, or if you know someone who is worried or unsure: please email me at lntranq(at)gmail(dot)com. Please put in the subject line: E.N.D Your City, Your State. We are stationed in North Carolina but we do have contacts for United We Dream END coordinators across the U.S. We’ll be able to direct you to the proper resources.  In the email, please include your name and some form of contact information and we’ll be in touch as soon as possible. All information is confidential and you are not required to out yourself if you don’t want to.

Please reblog!!!