North Miami High students protested a judge's order to deport Daniela Pelaez, their valedictorian. Marching out of their classrooms just after classes began this morning, they chanted "Education, not Deportation" and "Let Her Stay."
Pelaez met with the Miami-Dade School Superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, who held Daniela's hand and walked out to join the protest, saying "over my dead body will this child be deported."
Daniela Pelaez is an IB Scholar with a weighted 6.7 GPA*, who's applied to Yale, Dartmouth, Duke, Wesley, and Trinity, and has a significant chance of being accepted to those schools.
When asked about the pending deportation order, Daniela said "I've been asked the question before: 'Do I feel American?' or 'Do I believe I am?' And I don't think it's a question. I'm American. I know the national anthem. I know the laws. I know what it is to be an American."
Daniela Pelaez
Her father is a legal resident, but a judge recently ordered that she and her sister be sent back to Columbia where their mother resides.
This is obscene. This is obscene for so many reasons.
This is one of the brightest young people in the United States, and we're deporting her. We have spent a lot of tax dollars educating her, she loves this country and wants to give back, and we're deporting her.
That's the argument that I've tried using on conservatives: why kick someone out when we've paid for their education, and they want to be a successful, contributing member of society?
It makes no rational sense. We're going to give her the best education possible and then send her back to Columbia? If you actually cared about the future of this country, you wouldn't just let her stay! You would want to find a hundred more young people just like her!
And all of these arguments I've been making ignore the human costs of separating her from her father and the nation she's lived in since she was four.
But for conservatives, this has never been about making sense, or caring about the country, or the human cost. This isn't about rationality. This is about trying to keep all the brown people out so that the United States stays white.
If her name was Diana Peterson instead of Daniela Pelaez and she was from Australia instead of Columbia I'm sure we'd find some way to keep her around.
One of her classmates has put up a petition here.
MSNBC has full coverage of the story here.
*Yes, with college courses and International Baccalaureate, a weighted GPA is possible. Technically. Under the same rules my high school GPA was something like 3.1. This is an impressive young woman.