EJ MONTINI

Montini: Is Arizona’s deported mom the new Rosa Parks?

EJ Montini
opinion columnist

She could have run. She didn’t.

She could have sought sanctuary in a church. She didn’t.

She could have skipped her appointment at the Phoenix office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and faded into the background. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children have done that. Millions.

Not her.

Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos decided, in her own way, for her own reasons, that she was no longer going to sit in the back of the bus.

This is the face of mass deportation

Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos.

There is danger coming out from the shadows.

She did so anyway.

Then again, she’s been in the sunlight for a long time. She wasn’t going to retreat into the darkness.

If anything, she decided to show the rest of us what the face of mass deportations would look like.

MORE: Arizona family shattered by deportation vows to stay together

It will look like her. A 35-year-old mother of two American born kids. A woman brought here as a 14-year-old, reared here, working here. Not anything grand or glorious. Custodial work. Just enough to make a living. To set an example for her children.

"I'm only a mother who fights for my children. I faced (ICE) because I didn't want to be hiding, I don't like that,” she said. "We are going to move forward."

Garcia de Rayos was swept up in a raid at Golfland Sunsplash back in 2008, one of then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s work-place raids.

Garcia de Rayos did what ICE asked

She was discovered to have used two Social Security numbers that didn’t belong to her. Couldn’t belong to her. She eventually accepted a charge of criminal impersonation. The lowest class of felony.

She’s been cooperating with ICE since. She was granted a deportation stay, which allowed her to obtain a work permit. With that, she went back to her custodial job at Golfland.

She’s been reporting to ICE regularly. Once a year at first. Then every six months.

ROBERTS: Will deporting this mom really make us safe?

She knew of President Donald Trump’s executive order expanding the range of offenses for which the Department of Homeland Security can target those like her, individuals who have caused no trouble, have records for relatively minor offenses and strong family ties.

She was taken into custody Wednesday by ICE during her regularly scheduled check-in, then deported to Mexico.

Her two children were there to watch and have been vocal at the protests supporting their mother.

Her daughter Jackie is 14, the age Guadalupe was when she was brought to the U.S. Her son Angel is 16.

Earlier this month, President Trump told the president of Mexico that he was prepared to send U.S. troops if necessary to deal with “bad hombres” from south of the border.

Is this one of Trump's 'bad hombres?' 

Garcia de Rayos doesn’t quite fit the description.

She is more Rosa Parks than Ma Barker.

Still, she was loaded into a caged vehicle and deported.

This has made her the face of millions of people like her, people we must find a way – a humane way – to deal with.

EDITORIAL: Deportation protests? We ain't seen nothing yet

Her son Angel said, “She showed up year after year (at ICE) because she knows she’s not a criminal. She followed the law. A criminal wouldn’t show up, a good person is the one that shows up before a judge and officials.”

He’s right.

But good people get caught up in bad public policy.

In this case, Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos was forced to the back of the bus, where the windows have wire mesh over them.