A major coalition of labor unions has called for the release and end of deportation proceedings against a Suffolk County Community College honors student who was arrested by immigration agents as part of an escalating nationwide crackdown.
The heads of the Long Island Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, an umbrella group of unions that represents about 300,000 workers, said Monday that Sara Lopez Garcia should be released from an immigration jail in Louisiana and returned to Long Island to continue her studies.
“What we know is that Sara Lopez Garcia is a promise. She is a promise of what this country can be when we lift up hardworking students who contribute to our communities and try to make a better life for themselves, in this case through higher education,” John Durso and Ryan Stanton, president and executive director of the group, said in a statement.
“She is not a threat. She is a student. A daughter. A community member. She belongs here,” they said.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- A major coalition of unions on Long Island is calling for the release of a Suffolk County Community College honors student who was arrested by ICE.
- The Long Island Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, said Sara Lopez Garcia “is not a threat” and never should have been detained because she has legal status.
- Lopez Garcia, 20, who is being held in an ICE center in Louisiana, said in an interview with Newsday: “I am not a criminal.”
They noted that Lopez Garcia, 20, a native of Colombia, had protected legal status in the United States through a special immigrant juvenile status visa. The visa is granted to young people who have been abused, abandoned or neglected by a parent.
“When a young woman with protected status is detained, it’s not just Sara who is targeted. It’s every worker, every student, every immigrant who calls this country home,” Durso and Stanton said.
“The unjust detention of a young woman with legally protected status is a moral failure and a direct attack on the values we claim to uphold as a nation,” they said.
Lopez Garcia and her mother were arrested on May 21 when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents came to their house in Mastic. Her 17-year-old brother was allowed to stay because he is a minor.
In a telephone interview on Saturday from the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, Louisiana, where she has spent the last month, Lopez Garcia said she is grateful for the outpouring of support she has received from the college community and others. Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) said he is bringing her case to the attention of the White House and the Department of Homeland Security.
“I think that that’s really important to show people that we are not criminals and I am not a criminal,” she said. “They can see my record.”
Lopez Garcia said she was arrested even though she told the agents she had a legal status along with a valid Social Security card and work permit. Her work permit was renewed as recently as January, she said, and a green card was likely on the way within months.
The agents did not have visible identification saying they were ICE — she thought they were local police, and that she had nothing to hide, she said.
“At that moment, I was in shock because I told him, like, ‘No, I have a legal status.’ I have a Social Security number. I have everything,” she said.
ICE has not responded to messages seeking comment on Lopez Garcia’s case.
Her arrest has provoked outrage on the SCCC campus, where professors are calling for her return.
Lopez Garcia said that after her arrest, she signed papers agreeing to be deported because she was told that fighting for her case would mean spending six months or more in jail.
She and her mother, Viviana Garcia Gomez, and her brother came to the United States on tourist visas in 2020, she said. Months after they arrived, they filed for the juvenile visas and were approved because their father had abandoned them.
For years, the visa has meant that young people generally could stay in the United States and not be deported while they waited for green cards, even though the government had the right to deport them if it wanted to, said Theo Liebmann, a professor at Hofstra Law School who specializes in immigration law and deportation issues.
However, the Trump administration changed the conditions of the visa in April, he said. Newly granted special immigrant juvenile visa holders no longer are protected against deportation and no longer receive work permits, he said.
It is not clear if the Trump administration is also retroactively revoking the protection against deportation on existing cases, he said, though Lopez Garcia’s arrest suggests it might be.
Trump has said his immigration crackdown, which he pledges will be the largest in U.S. history, is aimed at deporting dangerous criminals living in the country illegally.
Advocates contend that many of those caught up in the escalating roundup are farm hands, landscapers, restaurant workers and others with no criminal records or violations beyond entering the country without documentation.
In the Louisiana facility, Lopez Garcia said, she is being held in a large room with a total of 72 people. They share bunk beds.
She said she has tried to help other detainees who don’t speak English by translating for them.
Bart Jones has covered religion, immigration and major breaking news at Newsday since 2000. A former foreign correspondent for The Associated Press in Venezuela, he is the author of “HUGO! The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution.”