SAN DIEGO – Migration lawyer Dulce Miriam García , a “dreamer”, as the beneficiaries of the DACA program for immigrants arriving in childhood are known, returned to California after a two-month mission in which helped hundreds of migrants stranded in Mexico to cross the border in search of asylum.
“What I bring back is hope,” García told Efe this Saturday.
During his visit, mainly to Tijuana (Mexico), he helped with a team of volunteers for the administration of President Joe Biden to admit more than 125 asylum cases , most of them from entire families fleeing violence.
“Actually, the most important thing is not the number of cases accepted, but the impact we achieve in their lives, ” said the lawyer.
He managed, among other cases, that the mother of a military intelligence lieutenant, Rocío Rebollar, what n had been deported a little over a year ago, she returned to San Diego a few days ago, now as asylum seeker.
Another important case It was her own brother, Edgar, who was deported earlier this year.
But Dulce García felt more deeply cases like that of “Lupita”, an adolescent from southern Mexico who fled a small town after organized crime killed her father and she chased her to the north of the country.
“When we We were heading to the San Ysidro port of entry to cross the border in search of asylum, the girl told me that she wanted to study and become a lawyer to return to help her people, ”said García with emotion.
Hope is contagious
“It was one of the cases that infected me with hope, and I hope to see that girl become a lawyer one day, stand by her side, help his people ”, he spoke.
The lawyer who benefited from the DA program CA was able to leave the United States with a permit from the Department of Homeland Security (HSD) for work reasons.
García is the executive director of Ángeles de la Frontera, that during the pandemic it was one of the few organizations that was able to continue assisting migrant shelters in Tijuana, but its assistant in that city fell ill and the lawyer decided to personally take on the work in the fields.
In the first weeks she dedicated herself to supporting more than two thousand migrants, many of them children, who had spent weeks in the “La Esperanza” camp in Tijuana, without basic services such as food or portable toilet facilities.
President Biden’s administration had only allowed open cases to cross the border in the now-terminated “Remain in Mexico” program, tens of thousands of migrants were stranded at the border without power pass.
Pe When the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) obtained through a lawsuit that the administration accept the most vulnerable cases from among these migrants , García and Gina Garibo, from the American Friends Services Committee, decided to go in search of those people.
The Psychologists Without Borders from the border Mexican state of Baja California, the Centro de Resources for Deported Veterans and groups of nursing and medical students.
For weeks, sometimes on days from sunrise to sunset, García and a volunteer lawyer from the Asia Pacific Labor Association (APLA) , Ian Seruelo, took testimonies and formulated files.
The cases collected in the field work went to the ACLU in San Diego, from there to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Soon migrants with terminal illnesses, persecuted, mothers of children who required assistance, began to cross the border daily. Urgent medical care, among others.
“I will no longer personally see people cross the border for many of these cases, but I return with satisfaction and above all hope. Thousands of migrants remain and we are going to continue on this side now, one case at a time, without stopping, ”said García.
The team that documents the cases in the Tijuana camp will continue to operations, now with the help of other lawyers who cross the border.
The lawyer Dulce Miriam García had achieved notoriety since, in May of 2017, was the first “dreamer”, the first undocumented lawyer, who sued then President Donald Trump for canceling the DACA program.
Trump appealed and Garcia won again, then the president took the case before the Supreme Court, where the lawyer He beat him again.