Last night, a Mesa mother became the center of the growing national debate over President Trump’s new immigration enforcement policies.
For years, Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos has voluntarily gone to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in the Valley and checked in.
It’s been a requirement for her ever since she was arrested in 2008 as part of one of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s workplace immigration raids. She was charged for using a fake Social Security number in order to work.
Usually, she checks in, answers a few questions and is released back to her family — including her two children, who are U.S. citizens.
But this year, when she went to check in at the ICE offices in central Phoenix, she was taken into custody. An estimated 200 demonstrators were there, too, protesting her detainment and saying she was the first casualty of President Trump’s executive order on immigration.
That protest was organized by immigrants-rights group Puente, and we're joined now by Carlos Garcia, director of Puente.
