Stop Matias' Deportation: Share With Your Friends

Sign the petition at www.endourpain.com/matias.


Update: Great news! Yesterday evening, Matias received a visit at his home from an ICE agent and was released from the electronic shackle! This could not have been possible without your support. You and many other supporters made calls to ICE, signed the petition and shared it with your friends and family. However, Matias' deportation has not been canceled yet. Although he has been granted a six month stay, he still faces the uncertainty being deported to Argentina. 

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Please Help Matias Ramos

Matias Ramos is one of the founders of the DREAMer movement.  He is a Newman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.  Matias already had a work permit and was reporting regularly to an ICE office in Fairfax, Virginia.  Last week he was given orders for deportation.  Web site in support of Matias Ramos:  www.endourpain.com/matias



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Good afternoon friends of immigration reform,

I write to you to ask that you join CCO, PICO, United We Dream, and many other organizations in calling for the stop to the deportation of DREAM students - especially Matias Ramos, a co-founder of the United We Dream Network.  He is expected to leave the country in the next 11 days and his deportation would be a great loss to the DREAM movement and show just how effective the recent DHS memos regarding prioritization actually are (or are not in this case).  Please take the time to read the message below from his colleague and friend and then act by signing the petition, e-mailing Lindsay to sign-on to the letter, and joining the call if you are able.  Thank you for your continued support of our DREAM students!

Whitney Gerlach | Community Organizer

COMMUNITIES CREATING OPPORTUNITY

office 816-444-5585x8 | cell 816-604-0401

CCO.org | @CCOwhitney | @KansasCityCCO

CCO is a federation of the PICO National Network

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

As you have heard, Matias Ramos, co-founder of the United We Dream Network, a loved and respected leader in the fight for a just immigration system, is being ordered to leave the country in 12 days. He is one of my best friends and one of our board members for United We Dream, we are outraged and
saddened to hear that this is happening to him, but we know that he is just an example of the pain that our immigrant community is enduring.

Matias was arrested in an airport and released by immigration in February of 2010 after attending a national gathering of immigrant youth. After being detained in 2010, Matias was issued a deportation order and put on an order of supervision. He was also given a work permit and now works as a Newman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. For the past year and a half, he has been on an order of supervision that requires him to report regularly in Fairfax, Virginia. 

At a regular report meeting with ICE last week, Matias was placed on the Intense Supervision and Appearance Program (ISAP) which requires him to wear an ankle bracelet at all times, and charge it against the wall for three hours each day.  The bracelet talks to him; it barks out commands at different times of the day.  The ISAP people have already come to his home twice to check on him.

The most shocking part of this ICE action is after the amount of work that we all have done to push the Obama Administration to issue guidelines to stop the deportations of many non-criminals in our community, their guidelines and announcements are not having an effect in creating relief for our community. On the contrary we are seeing the regional local ICE offices take matters into their own hands to continue to deport as many people as they can.

Thank you for all of the support and concern you all have shown for Matias, as we’ve launched a public campaign for deferred action on his case. So far, we have circulated a petition for his case which can be found here:www.endourpain.com/matias We need your organization's support for Matias's case in the following ways;

1.     Sign on to the attached letter asking Enrique Lucero, the Fairfax ICE Field Office Director, to grant Matias deferred action. Email Lindsay McCluskey at mccluskey.lindsay@gmail.com by 5pm on Friday to sign on.
2.      Send out the petition to your organizational list serves to help build strong public support for Matias (here is the link to our current petition www.endorupain.com/matias) for support please contact our online manager Rosa Alvarez at rosa@unitedwedream.org
3.     Join us for a call on Friday at 3pm EST to discuss more ways that you can stop Matias's deportation and many others that are in similar circumstances, please RSVP by sending me an email - carlos@unitedwedream.org
Matias’s story is a glimpse into what DREAMers and their parents across the country are going through. We hope that Matias's compelling case can help build toward changes that will impact more people and get the relief that is needed.

With urgency,

Carlos Saavedra
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National Coordinator
United We Dream Network(UWD)
Cell:    617-459-1935
carlos@unitedwedream.org

A Fair and Just DREAM Act by Matias Ramos

Religious Leaders and American Scholars Believe in DREAM Act
Washington, D.C. – This week, leading American scholars re-issued a national sign-on letter in support of the DREAM Act. This move comes in the heels of growing advocacy by the faith community across the nation and especially in Washington, D.C. American scholars and the faith community agree that the DREAM Act is economically and morally right for our country. DREAMers all over the country have joined them in telling their stories in communities across the nation, making the case for this small piece of sensible immigration reform.


The DREAM Act is based on the principles of fairness and justice. From its inception, the DREAM Act was intended to provide children brought to the United States against their will an opportunity to become productive members of society. The substance of the DREAM Act has changed throughout the years, but its core principles have remained constant. Last week the House of Representatives approved the DREAM Act in an historic vote that re-invigorated the push for the passage of the bill before the end of the year. The Senate is expected to soon take up the new version of the DREAM Act for a vote.


The United We DREAM Network praises Congressional leaders for their efforts in securing the passage of this important piece of legislation. Bipartisan support in the passage of the bill is important and should be based on the bill’s core principles. The nation still faces the challenge of addressing immigration reform in a more complex and comprehensive way and the DREAM Act is the first step towards achieving that. A DREAM Act based on justice and fairness would re-establish morality in the debate over immigration policy and help our country move forward.


As a national immigrant youth-led organization, the mission of the United We Dream Network is to achieve equal access to higher education for all people, regardless of immigration status. We aim to address the inequities and obstacles faced by immigrant youth and to develop a sustainable, grassroots movement, led by immigrant youth, documented and undocumented, and children of immigrants. We use leadership development, organizing, policy advocacy, alliance building, training and capacity building to pursue our mission at the local, state and national levels. Please visit http://www.unitedwedream.org/

Matias Ramos Writing in the Nation Magazine

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From The Nation, November 23, 2009 issue

Matias Ramos, United We Dream

The DREAM Act--a bill in Congress that seeks to create an earned path to legal status for undocumented immigrant youth--failed to pass 377 days before Obama was elected. It was introduced again sixty-five days after his inauguration, and thousands of people like me--undocumented students--are still counting the days.

Our country is home to about 2.5 million undocumented youth. Only a fraction of them have an opportunity to enroll in college like I did. That's a huge loss for our economy, because college graduates earn (and pay taxes on) twice as much income as those without high school diplomas. In 2006, five years after undocumented students were allowed to enter Texas colleges at in-state tuition rates, the state comptroller reported that undocumented workers produced $1.58 billion in state revenues, which exceeded the $1.16 billion in state services they received.

This year there is undeniable and growing energy within our movement, coming from immigrants and citizens alike. United We Dream, a youth-led immigrants' rights network mobilizing support for the DREAM Act, was established to provide a united front made up of a few national organizations, dozens of student groups and individual students hungry for change. In June hundreds of DREAMers went to Washington for a symbolic "DREAM Act Graduation." Thousands more participated in more than 120 local actions in twenty-eight states celebrating back-to-school day in September.

We need progressives of all ages and backgrounds to join in this fight. Establishing a progressive immigration policy should be a goal not only for the Latino or Asian-American communities but for all those concerned with social justice and fairness. DREAMers across the country are saying the time is now. We know--we've been counting the days

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Despite these obstacles, young activists continued to organize. The Nation asked four leading youth organizers to suggest specific ways the Obama administration and the progressive movement could help them succeed in 2010 to mobilize the most diverse and socially progressive generation.

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Forum by Kristina Rizza

When the Obama campaign inspired and mobilized a wave of new young voters, youth organizers across the country rejoiced. They anticipated increased funding from donors and foundations to help bring this growing voting bloc into policy debates and community organizing. They hoped for increased media coverage for issues ranging from college costs to green jobs to healthcare reform. Instead, youth organizers have often found themselves feeling as if they're sitting on a bus that's out of service. As markets crashed, already meager funding pools got even smaller. Most media outlets chose to spotlight the absence of youth at healthcare town halls, which were often staged at empty college campuses over the summer break, rather than the thousands of environmental and education activists who stormed Washington to support reductions of carbon emissions, creation of green jobs and the passage of the DREAM Act. And with a few exceptions, the Obama administration stopped talking to young people directly.