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Hackathon For Immigration Reform Begins In Silicon Valley

PHOENIX – Twenty tech-savvy DREAMers, along with some of the country's tech leaders, are coding today and tonight to come up with tools that can help advocate for immigration reform.

The 24-hour hackathon is happening at the LinkedIn headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. It's hosted by FWD.us, an immigration reform advocacy group whose founder's include tech giants Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.

Zuckerberg, along with LinkedIn's founder Reid Hoffman and Dropbox's Drew Houston, are serving as advisers for the participants.

FWD.us president Joe Green described the goal of the hackathon in a blog post last month.

Only with comprehensive immigration reform will our participants and their families be able to work and reside permanently in the United States without fear of deportation. We hope the Hackathon sheds light on just a small fraction of the many talents of the undocumented immigrant community, and how our broken immigration system prevents 11 million people from realizing their full potential.

FWD.us has pledged to help launch the most innovative ideas that are generated by the teams as part of its advocacy for immigration reform.

One of the selected paricipants is Celso Mireles, a DREAMer and activist from Phoenix who was born in Mexico. He is a tech consultant and started his own business, Computer Dude Services, LLC. He describes himself on his Twitter handle as an "UndocuEntrepreneur." 

@CelsoM3

Jude Joffe-Block was a senior field correspondent at KJZZ from 2010 to 2017.