Related story: O.C. illegal immigrant arrested in D.C.
Update: O.C. illegal immigrant freed in D.C.
WASHINGTON – A UC Irvine graduate arrested Tuesday on Capitol Hill while demonstrating for a bill to help illegal immigrant students knew she could be deported but decided to sacrifice for the cause, fellow activists said.
Capitol police arrested Antonia Rivera, 28, of Santa Ana, and 11 other young people for disorderly conduct as they sat in a circle in the middle of the Hart Senate Office Building. Nine more activists were arrested later Tuesday for unlawful entry at the offices of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
The actions were intended to convince lawmakers to support the DREAM Act. The bill would give a chance at legal status to people brought illegally to the United States at a young age and who were educated here.
Opponents, however, say passing such a measure would reward illegal behavior and that people who crossed the border illegally or who overstayed their visas shouldn’t be allowed to remain.
Demonstrations are not allowed in Capitol buildings, police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said. She couldn’t say whether Rivera and the other protesters would be turned over to federal immigration officials.
“This was a civil disobedience action,” said Matias Ramos, a 24-year-old illegal immigrant and activist from Anaheim. “These folks did the lobby thing; they took all the recourses they could and they were at the point that they felt this was a necessary step to make a statement.”
DREAM Act supporters planned a vigil outside the jail Tuesday night to show support for the arrested activists, said Ramos, who was with Rivera in D.C. but not one of those participating in the sit-in.
A spokesman for Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who authored the DREAM Act, said the sit-in “crossed the line from passionate advocacy to inappropriate behavior.”
The sit-in came as hundreds of other activists from around the country – including a half dozen from Orange County – marched around the Capitol chanting “DREAM Act now” and “Education, not deportation.” The group also staged a “mock graduation” at a nearby church to highlight the fact that many illegal immigrants have university degrees but are unable to work in their field.
But the most dramatic protest of the day came on the floor of the Hart building, as Rivera and the others, all dressed in graduation cap and gowns, sat silently in a circle surrounding banners which read “Undocumented and Unafraid” and “DREAM Act Now.”
“We just hope people get the message and just understand that we’re not afraid,” Rivera said before the arrests. “And understand that what we’re doing, we’re doing it with the best intentions.”
Moments later, about 10 police officers arrived and told Rivera and the others that they were violating the law. Witnesses said the police gave the protesters one minute to leave or they would be arrested. The activists didn’t budge.
Police handcuffed them and led them one-by-one to waiting vans, which transported them to jail.
“We knew this could happen,” said fellow DREAM Act supporter Neidi Dominguez, 22, of Los Angeles, who watched the arrests with tears in her eyes. “It was worth it, yes. If you ask every single one of them they would say yes.”
That was especially true for Rivera, a literary journalism graduate whose parents brought her to the U.S. from Mexico when she was 6, friends said.
Before being arrested, Rivera said the passage of the DREAM Act would be “a chance for freedom.”
“I feel like I just wasted 10 years where I could have been very successful, done many things, created change,” she said. “It would be a chance at life.”
She predicted the DREAM Act would be passed before the August recess, and said she had been received well earlier in the day at the offices of three senators, including Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a cosponsor of the bill.
“It’s unfortunate that they would resort to getting themselves arrested as a political statement instead of working to build the bipartisan support the bill would need,” Feinstein spokesman Gil Duran said.
Durbin and other DREAM Act supporters have acknowledged it is highly unlikely that the plan will be considered before the November elections..
Other activists who traveled from Orange County for the protest said they were proud of the arrested students and they would continue fighting.
“We are a community. Not undocumented and documented communities. We are one community,” said Francisco Gonzalez, a 19-year-old college student from Anaheim. “We’re here for the betterment of all and we’re not going to back down.”
Contact the writer: (202) 628-6381 or brosenthal@ocregister.com
