As Kelly Macias wrote this past June, the criminalization of marijuana “sends more black and brown folks to prison and for longer, harsher sentences than it does white people … regardless of the fact that both blacks and whites use the drug at equal rates.” In Iowa, this racist war on drugs—one that Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is hellbent on escalating—may get an 18-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient deported:
[Luis Quintana Alvarez] was riding in a car to Ames with his cousin when they were stopped for speeding. Police found a gram of marijuana (worth about $10, according to online testimonials) in the car.
Quintana and his attorney, Ta-Yu Yang, say he claimed the pot was his to protect his cousin, a U.S. citizen, from getting kicked out of college. Quintana, who had just turned 18, thought he'd get off easier because of his age.
The pot charge itself resulted in a year of probation, but triggered federal involvement because of his DACA status. That was revoked; he was slated for deportation and denied bail.
With both Quintana’s appeal and asylum claims rejected, the young man now faces being deported to a country he hasn’t been to since he was 11 months old. "My world would just be over," Quintana told USA Today columnist Rekha Basu. "I would feel like a foreigner because I've been here in America all my life. I pledged allegiance from kindergarten to 12th grade."
Some of Quintana’s avenues have been exhausted. His attorney appealed his detention, “arguing a gram of marijuana is not a serious controlled-substance crime as defined by immigration law. People are ineligible for DACA if they've been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor or multiple misdemeanors. But Yang says the Immigration and Naturalization Act makes an exception for possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana.”
That appeal was rejected:
Yang then filed for asylum on Quintana's behalf, which requires convincing a judge someone would face persecution in the homeland because of race, religion, nationality, political opinions or membership in a particular social group. Quintana's claim is based on a novel argument: that having been a DACA recipient would make him a target for violence and exploitation in Mexico.
Quintana says it would identify him as someone who had residence and family ties in the United States because Mexican cartels are known to target people with U.S. ties for kidnap and ransom demands. Yang says there's not yet a record of that happening because DACA kids have not been deported.
But an immigration judge in Omaha late last month rejected that claim, ruling that DACA doesn't qualify as a social group.
Last October another Mexican national, Constantino Morales, was deported from Des Moines and shot to death by a cartel in Mexico.
And we know at least one DACA recipient actually has been deported. In fact, Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the same honorable judge attacked for his Mexican heritage by Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, is overseeing the case. In Quintana’s case, “Yang is appealing the latest denial to the Board of Immigration Appeals.” Quintana’s family is devastated at the thought of losing him:
His mother, who works as a housekeeper and asked not to be identified, told me she is so anxious and depressed about his arrest she is barely able to function. Speaking through an interpreter, she said Quintana was the victim of physical and sexual abuse by his father, and that left him with anxiety and insecurities. The father also abused her and the other children, she said. He left when Quintana was 3 and hasn't been heard from since.
Quintana said he still suffers emotionally from the abuse. His mother sent him for counseling when he was younger, "but I never opened up to any counselor. I just had so many walls built up." He said he had fallen in with a bad crowd but isn't friends with them anymore. He has long dreamed of playing professional soccer but lately has also been considering law.
As Walter Einenkel has written, ”most United States citizens have no problem with the concept of legalizing weed and ending the criminalization of millions of Americans,” something that disproportionately affects people of color, like Quintana. Now Quintana faces his life and the lives of his loved ones being upended over something you can buy legally in states like Oregon. "I really don't understand how they could want to deport me, who has been here all his life, over a small amount of marijuana," Quintana said.