A Georgia college student faces deportation after she ran a red light, and authorities discovered her entire family has been illegally living in the US for nearly 15 years.
Mexican-national Ximena Arias-Cristobal, 19, was pulled over by police in Dalton, Ga. on May 5 when she failed to adhere to a “no turn on red” sign.
Ximena Arias-Cristobal, a Dalton State Community College student, was driving without a driver’s license but told officers she had an international driver’s license, according to WTVC, citing the arrest report.
She admitted that she didn’t have the foreign document when Dalton police officers asked her to show it, claiming that her mother had taken it away from her and said she was not supposed to be driving.
In 2010, Arias-Cristobal was brought into the US illegally by her parents when she was only 4 years old during the family’s move from Mexico City to the Dalton area — over 30 miles from the Tennessee and Georgia border.
Because of her non-citizen status, Arias-Cristobal was paying out-of-state tuition for school despite living in the area.
The officer who pulled her over attempted to speak to the teen’s mom and the owner of the car, but neither of them spoke English, according to the report.
Arias-Cristobal was arrested and charged with driving without a valid license and failure to obey traffic control devices.
She was transported to the Whitfield County Jail, a partner of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 287(G) program, used to identify illegal aliens in the country.
“This program operates based on a series of reviews and background checks completed only after an inmate is already arrested for an Offense under Georgia Law,” the jail’s operation guide said.
Arias-Cristobal was processed through the federal database, which confirmed she wasn’t a US citizen
She was brought to ICE’s Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga., where her father, Jose Francisco Arias-Tovar, is also being held.
Arias-Tovar was arrested last month when he was pulled over for driving 19 miles over the speed limit, the outlet reported.
The father, who owns his own company, was denied proper paperwork to remain in the US. It was not known if he ever applied for citizenship.
“My dad has his own company, and they called a lawyer to see if they could get a job permit or a visa, and they said that they hadn’t hit that status to get one yet,” Arias-Cristobal’s younger sister told WTVC.
Arias-Cristobal was not eligible for the DACA program, having been brought into the country a year after the program ended, according to Hannah Jones, the woman the teen babysat for in the past.
Jones created a GoFundMe to raise money for an immigration attorney and bond for the teen.
Chatanooga, Tennessee-based immigration attorney Terry Olsen called out the family’s detention.
“We do see that ICE is really trying to find any and all methods to say that an international has some way violated the process and their status. What’s concerning is that when they are being checked at these checkpoints or at the stops, ICE does not have their entire immigration file in front of them, they’re not looking at all of it, and they’re just relying on one item. This is a civil rights issue,” Olsen told the outlet.
Olsen said Arias-Cristobal’s mother will be arrested and deported within a month and her daughters will be taken with her to keep the family together.