ICE officials have apprehended undocumented immigrants in Georgia following multiple traffic violations. What adds a layer of complexity to the situation is that one of them is an attractive college student, which seems to have garnered increased media sympathy.
Daily Mail reports: “The striking college student made an illegal turn at a red light, leading to her detention by ICE.”
New York Post mentions: “A University of Georgia student is now facing potential deportation after running a red light, revealing that her entire family has been living in the U.S. illegally for years.”
“Ximena Arias-Cristobal, a University of Georgia student, is set to be deported after her red light violation exposed her family’s undocumented status,” declares International Business Times.
Ximena Arias-Cristobal, 19, originally from Mexico, was stopped by the police on May 5th in Dalton, Georgia. She was driving without a valid driver’s license, although she claimed to possess an international one. When asked, she admitted that it had been taken away from her and insisted she wasn’t driving without the required documents.
In 2010, her parents brought her to the United States illegally when she was just four years old, moving from Mexico City to Dalton, which is over 30 miles from the Tennessee-Georgia border.
The local news indicated that her father is already in detention after being caught speeding.
Ironically, Arias-Cristobal is being held in the same facility as her father, Jose Francisco Arias Toval, who was detained two weeks earlier for the same offense.
Her attorney, Terry Olsen, noted that her mother might also face detention for an extended period. A friend, Hannah Jones, mentioned on a crowdfunding platform that Arias-Cristobal had been helping babysit her children for years, voicing her admiration for the young woman. Jones described her as “the most precious person” and said she believed Ximena’s international license was enough to drive legally.
“My cousin’s dear friend, Ximena Arias-Cristobal, is confronting a terrible situation,” reads the Gofundme page. “After making an illegal turn at a red light in Dalton, this 19-year-old student is now facing deportation.”
This incident puts pressure on President Trump’s ICE agency, which reportedly has millions of deportations still to process within a slow-moving and complicated legal framework.
Lawyer Jonathan Turley has commented that Trump was elected partially on the promise to increase deportations, and he has sought various methods to achieve this. Courts seem to be caught in a ‘squatter syndrome,’ where the migration system’s inefficiencies result in millions being stuck in a sort of limbo. This scenario could mark a significant aspect of President Biden’s legacy.
Polls show that many Americans still support the deportation of individuals with criminal records, indicating that a considerable portion of the population approves of Trump’s approach to immigration.
“Citizens deserve a functional system to address the crisis of illegal immigration; otherwise, we risk becoming a country overwhelmed by an inefficient legal process,” Turley stated.
