Allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s common sense. Despite the fact that research has shown public safety improves when drivers have to undergo road tests and insure their vehicles in order to share our roads, only 12 states and D.C. allow undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses. In states where they are outright banned from doing so—almost always a Republican-led effort—undocumented immigrants are forced to make something as ordinary as driving to work so they can support their families or dropping their kids off at school a risk, oftentimes one that can upheave entire lives and leave U.S. citizen kids without their mom:
Alicia Ortiz-Mojica, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was driving with her two daughters for a day out in April when she allegedly ran a red light in Hall County, Georgia. A police officer pulled her over and found out she had been driving without a license, a privilege not granted for people without Social Security numbers. Over the course of the encounter, the officer allegedly found out about a prior arrest from November 2016, immigrant advocacy groups say, for another instance of driving without a license.
Ortiz’s 15-year-old daughter Lizbhet and a younger daughter were in the backseat and witnessed the arrest. With Ortiz in handcuffs, the officer reportedly waited for Lizbhet to call a licensed friend to drive them in the car to a relative’s home.
“It was really hard when she got arrested. I cried a lot,” Lizbhet told ThinkProgress in a phone interview. (Her uncle, who is now her guardian, granted permission for the phone call).
Alicia’s family, unable to pay the $12,000 bond set by an immigration judge, set up an online fundraiser to raise the needed money, but she remains in detention after two months. Alicia’s eldest child, Lizbhet, has been forced to become the parent figure to her three younger siblings, all U.S. citizens. Sadly, undocumented immigrants not being allowed to apply for a driver’s license and then getting punished for driving without a license is not a unique disgrace, with Think Progress finding two other undocumented moms facing deportation after driving without a license. In one instance, a daughter has taken on her detained mom’s night shift at an aquarium. Feeling safer yet, America?
There’s Blanca E. Villa Estrada, a mother of two underage teenager girls, who is also detained at Irwin. Her husband has began a fundraiser to help pay for her $12,000 bail bond.
There’s also Josefina Radilla Velasco, an undocumented single immigrant mother of six U.S. citizen children, stopped by police in Gwinnett County. She was also detained for driving without a license. Like Lizbhet, Radilla’s daughter Alondra has set up a fundraiser to raise $15,000 to get her mother out of detention. Her fundraiser talks about the constant fear of being separated from her mother. Alondra said she has since taken on her mom’s graveyard shift at the aquarium.
“Currently I took my mother’s spot at her job,” Alondra wrote in her fundraiser. “She works the nightshift ( coming in from 10 pm — 6am ) at the aquarium. Two days before she got transferred to Irwin detention center I went in for her soo [sic] she won’t lose her job.”
“It’s not easy being a mother of six children now can y’all imagine what I’m struggling with at this moment,” Alondra added.
According to Think Progress, four Georgia counties participate in 287(g), a flawed federal program deputizing “selected state and local law enforcement officers to perform the functions of federal immigration agents.” A favorite of anti-immigrant hardliners—the deplorable Sheriff David Clarke, for one—287(g) actually does little to improve public safety, instead encouraging distrust between immigrant communities and cops and targeting folks who have committed minor things like, in these cases, driving without a license. In many instances, 287(g) promotes racial profiling. Look at the reign of the disgraced and unemployed Sheriff Joe Arpaio:
An investigation by the Department of Justice concluded that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona engaged in a pattern and practice of constitutional violations, including racial profiling of Latinos, after entering a 287(g) agreement. For example, the investigation found that deputies of Sheriff Joe Arpaio routinely conducted “sweeps” in Latino neighborhoods, and that Latino drivers in certain parts of Maricopa County were up to nine times more likely to be stopped than non-Latino drivers.
According to ICE’s own data, only 45 law enforcement agencies participate in the program, no doubt due to the program’s bad reputation and police knowing stronger trust with the community makes a safer community.
“Local police agencies depend on the cooperation of immigrants, legal and [otherwise], in solving all sorts of crimes and in the maintenance of public order,” stated the International Association of Police Chiefs. “Without assurances that they will not be subject to an immigration investigation and possible deportation, many immigrants with critical information would not come forward, even when heinous crimes are committed against them or their families.”
Remember that when Donald Trump and John Kelly tell you they are targeting only “bad hombres” for arrest, they are lying to you. Instead, bigoted anti-immigrant policies are targeting hardworking, undocumented mothers like Alicia, Blanca, and Josefina, and creating orphans of their children. In Alicia’s case, her kids have penned letters to the immigration judge, in hope that he will allow her to return home:
“She’s everything we got here,” Lizbhet wrote in a letter to the immigration judge to plead her mother’s case. “Please I beg you have a heart and give her a chance to stay.”
George, Lizbhet’s younger brother who appeared with her in the fundraiser video separately appealed to the judge, in part writing, “she’s been with us all our lives.”
“And we love her so much so please give her another chance,” George continued. “She changed I know so please.”
