Illegal immigrant KSU student hopes to stay in U.S.

By Rhonda Cook and Andria Simmons

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

May 14, 2010

Hours after being released from jail, a Kennesaw State University student who has become the focus of a heated immigration debate told supporters and reporters “I never thought I was going to be caught up in this messed-up system.”

Jessica Colotl, flanked by her immigration and criminal defense attorneys, said Friday that she is evaluating whether to return to school and hoping that proposed national immigration reforms will help her stay in the country after graduation.

The rally held at Plaza Fiesta off Buford Highway in Atlanta was organized by several Latino community groups and human rights organizations. Posted near the speaker’s podium was a poster for the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights featuring Colotl’s image and the slogan “I march for Jessica.”

“I just hope for the best,” Colotl said. “I hope something positive comes out of this because we really need reform.”

Colotl was released from jail on $2,500 bond about 11:40 a.m. Friday. Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren secured a warrant Wednesday night to arrest Colotl, 21, on charges of lying about her address on a jail booking form. A KSU officer had arrested Colotl in March on a charge of driving without a license.

Colotl’s attorney, Christopher Taylor, said his client had lived at the Duluth address listed on her booking records as recently as November 2009. Her motor vehicle insurance and car registration paperwork were still being mailed there, Taylor said.

Taylor said that Colotl gave deputies her old address because it matched her car insurance paperwork. He said that on the same day, she also gave immigration enforcement officers her current address in Norcross and that sheriff’s deputies should have known where to find her.

Colotl was in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement following her first arrest, but at the urging of KSU, Colotl’s friends and advocacy groups, ICE agreed to defer her case until she completed her degree. She was released from a federal detention center in Alabama and allowed to return to the metro Atlanta area.

Warren said he issued the arrest warrant this week after learning that Colotl gave a false address when she was booked into the jail for the traffic violation in March.

Immigration attorney Chris Kuck said he had been in touch with ICE locally and nationally, and he did not expect federal officials to rearrest Colotl because of the latest alleged infraction. He said since she has been granted a one-year deferral by ICE, she is now pursuing her studies legally. He hopes to get her a work permit so she can again receive the less expensive in-state tuition status at Kennesaw State University.

Ivan Ortiz-Delgado, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday that the recent charges brought against Colotl will require the agency to reconsider her status.

“The charges brought against her changed the conditions” that led to ICE’s decision to defer her case and release her from custody, Ortiz-Delgado said.

“ICE will review Ms. Colotl’s case again and make an appropriate determination,” he said. “However, that has not happened yet.”

The American Civil Liberties Union on Friday accused Warren of “misplaced priorities and abusing the power granted to him” by the 287(g) program, which trains local law enforcement officers to work with federal authorities in identifying illegal immigrants who are arrested. The Georgia ACLU office has asked the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division of the Department of Homeland Security and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to look at the case.

“Jessica’s case is yet another outrageous example of the unaccountable local enforcement of immigration laws in Cobb County gone awry,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, director of the ACLU of Georgia National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project. “It is past time to put an immediate end to the 287(g) program in Cobb, which has led to racial profiling and the targeting of hardworking members of the community, the separation of families and the creation of an atmosphere of terror among immigrant communities in Cobb. 287(g) in Cobb has led to a less safe community for us all.”

Colotl, a Mexico native, has been in the United States for much of her life, coming here with her parents when she was 10. Friends said the family moved often until Colotl graduated from DeKalb County’s Lakeside High School in 2006 with a 3.8 grade-point average.

Her troubles began March 29 when she was stopped on the KSU campus and charged with impeding the flow of traffic. She reportedly told the officer she had a Mexican driver’s license but could not find it; she offered him a Mexican passport that expired in August 2007 as identification. While driving without a license is a relatively minor offense, making a false statement is a felony with a maximum punishment of five years in prison and a $1,000 fine.

The student, who will turn 22 next week, was arrested the next day, taken to the Cobb County jail and handed over to immigration authorities under an agreement the county has with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the 287(g) program.

Colotl was then taken to the Etowah Detention Center in Alabama to await deportation.

At the urging of KSU President Daniel Papp and others, she was released May 5 and ICE gave her a year’s reprieve so she could complete her degree. Friends say she is two semesters away from graduating.

The 287(g) program was designed to find violent illegal immigrants, but critics say it more often catches minor offenders such as those violating traffic laws.

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