Students Protest High School Senior’s Imminent Deportation

PHOENIX (AP) — A high school football player who has been in the United States since he was a toddler is in custody awaiting deportation to Mexico, prompting a protest Monday by classmates outside an Arizona sheriff's office.

Thomas Torres, who was to graduate May 22 from Desert View High School, was at a federal holding facility in Casa Grande, Arizona, according to the family he has been living with. Now, he is scheduled to appear in immigration court on that day.

Lorena Rodriguez said Torres had lived for years at her family's home, where he shared a room with her brother, who also is to graduate. Their caps and gowns are hanging in the bedroom closet.

Torres' detention, coming shortly before a major rite of passage in the only country he remembers, is a stark example of the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants.

Rodriguez, who launched a GoFundMe page to raise money for Torres' legal costs, said the young man was a toddler when his relatives brought him from Mexico in search of a better life. She said his parents had long since returned to Mexico, leaving him alone in the United States, and he had lived with her family throughout high school. "People like Thomas are needed in this country," Rodriguez wrote on the fundraising site. "He's a hardworking young man willing to better his future." Torres played on the Desert View High School football team and worked several jobs, including busing tables at a restaurant and yard work, friends said.

Although deportation proceedings involving high school students who have reached adulthood are not uncommon, the outpouring of support from Torres' classmates seemed unusual. A large portion of the population in Tucson's southern district, where the school is, is Mexican-American.

Torres' classmates marched about 4 miles from the school to the sheriff's office to request his release. They called on all law enforcement agencies not to collaborate with immigration authorities.

"Thomas is the American Dream," stated one of the many homemade signs carried by students protesting outside the sheriff's office. Other signs said: "Abolish the Border Patrol" and "Without Justice, There is No Peace."

Torres was arrested Thursday after a traffic stop by sheriff's deputies and turned over to the Border Patrol, said Victor Mercado, a spokesman for the Sunnyside Unified High School District.

Border Patrol spokeswoman Meredith Mingledorff confirmed on Monday that Torres is in federal custody and faces immigration charges after the agency was contacted by the Pima County Sheriff's Office.

Rodriguez said Torres told her family he was unable to produce a driver's license when he was stopped by sheriff's deputies. Arizona does not issue licenses to people who are in the county without authorization.

The sheriff's office said Monday that a deputy stopped the car Torres was driving to check whether the insurance was up to date. The agency said in a statement that when Torres didn't produce a license he told authorities he was in the country illegally and the deputy contacted the Border Patrol.

There was no information on where Torres was when he was stopped.

A federal judge ruled in the 1990s that the Border Patrol violated the civil rights of Latino students and staff at an El Paso, Texas high school by stopping them at the school without good cause to determine their citizenship. That school, Bowie High, is just a few yards from the U.S.-Mexico border.

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