Help Dani Zamora!
My buddy Dani from college just got deported after taking a wrong turn through a border checkpoint, despite living in the US for 11 years. He went to high school and college here, he has a Social Security number, a work permit, and a state issued ID. They detained him because he has the same name as some people with warrants, and while he has a clean criminal record, the government allegedly sent him some mail in 2003 asking him to go back to Mexico. He never received it and now he’s headed back there, to a place in which he hasn’t lived in over a decade. Please read his story. If you have any contacts of resources that might be useful to him, leave a message in my ask box and I will pass it along. This is so frustrating and upsetting.
“My heart sunk as low as it could go. And the wait continued. We Were moved again to the room were we first changed, they needed the rooms for other men who had been captured. Their faces lacking any hope. That place completely drained you.
In the small room, I encountered the guy who had dubbed me El Ahorcado (the one who hangs himself). Hey! He greeted me. He thought I had killed myself at night because he hadn’t seen me in the morning. I looked at him with my empty eyes and said nothing.”
I went to college with Dani, this is absolutely heartbreaking and infuriating, he’s such a talented, hardworking guy and I’m ashamed for this country. Please let us know if you know of any resources to fight this “oh, you didn’t get our deportation letter in the mail?” bullshit, which I’d read about in the NYT but never imagined happening to someone with so much legal documentation for his claim to this side of the border.
(Source: 100yearsoflolitude)
