UPDATE FROM MELINA:

Because of your pressure on ICE, I am now at home with my husband and daughter. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting me through the most difficult moment in my life.

Your action has inspired me to help others who are also experiencing unjust detention.

That’s why I’m joining the UWD Deportation Defense Team, and I’m asking you to join me.

As members of this team, we’ll be asked to work with and for undocumented immigrants like me who are at risk of being torn away from their families and community. This means signing and sharing petitions, making calls to ICE and being invited to get more involved behind the scenes.

I don’t personally know many of you, and it means the world to me that you stepped up for a complete stranger.

That’s what makes the United We Dream community so special - our shared commitment to justice and each other.

Join me on the UWD Deportation Defense Team.

Even as we fight to make DAPA and extended DACA a reality for our community, people will continue to fall through the cracks so it’s critical we have each other’s back.

Thank you again! I’m living proof that together, we are making a huge difference.

Melina

P.S. If you’d like to keep United We Dream’s deportation defense work going, please donate here!

Melina is a 27-year-old former DACA recipient and mother of a 9-year-old US citizen daughter, Emily. She has been detained for nearly two weeks and is in danger of being deported this week.

Melina has lived in the United States since 2000, and has strong family ties, including a US citizen husband, Howard, who she married in February 2015 after several years of dating and living together. Melina also has parents who are lawful permanent residents, and who are caring for her daughter while she is in detention. She worked at Gordon Food Service in Michigan before her detention.

Although Melina was eligible for a green card through her US citizen husband, Detroit ERO elected to put her in fast track deportation because she entered through the visa waiver program from Argentina. She was only 12 years old when she entered.

Melina is still in the process of getting her GED, and was granted DACA in July 2013. In October 2014, she was convicted for a shoplifting crime, the least serious kind of retail fraud in Michigan; the incident involved changing items at a grocery store self-checkout to pay less. She was also convicted of another petty shoplifting offense ten years ago, which carried only a suspended sentence.

None of these convictions disqualify her from DACA, and in fact, she would be eligible for a waiver if she applied for a green card. ICE decided to terminate her DACA without notice and without any opportunity to explain that she was still eligible for DACA.

ICE provides different answers to justify why they are denying this case. First, it was the convictions, but later charged her with being a visa abuser, even though she entered the country when she was twelve. Melina needs for ICE to grant DACA and to give her an opportunity to re-open her case so she can apply for a green card with her US citizen husband. Emily needs her here, and this would be the easiest way to fix this unjust deportation.