Rising Stars

For the last decade, undocumented immigrant students in New Mexico have been among those wearing the square caps with colorful cords and earning college degrees at schools around the state.

The opportunity for people with illegal residency status to pursue their higher education goals in the Land of Enchantment began 10 years ago, when then-Gov. Bill Richardson signed a bill into law that required schools to offer in-state tuition and state financial aid, including access to the New Mexico Lottery Scholarship, to all students who have completed high school or passed the GED exam after living in the state for at least 12 months.

Proponents of the law say regardless of immigration status, children brought into the country by their parents by no choice of their own shouldn't be barred from state schools, especially after completing elementary and secondary education here. But opponents say that it rewards lawbreakers and that only qualified residents should get in-state tuition.

It's unclear what side Gov. Susana Martinez is on. While she's proposed repealing driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants for the past five years, so far she hasn't suggested limiting their access to college. Martinez' staff did not respond to request to comment for this story.

Immigrants say they hope she supports their educational aspirations. They contend it's the best way up for immigrant youths, a third of whom live in poverty.

No one tracks exactly how many immigrant students have taken advantage of the law or the scholarship money, but according to a 2013 American Community Survey, only 8 percent of the estimated 70,000 undocumented immigrants living and working in New Mexico currently hold a bachelor's degree or higher.

The 2005 law opened classroom doors, but immigrant students are still barred from applying for federal grant money. While financial assistance can be a barrier for enrollment, SFR found some national and local scholarships available for undocumented students. Other ambitious students take out private loans with high interest rates and trust the efforts they make in school programs will eventually pay off with higher paying jobs.

Those who want to attend the University of New Mexico can get help through a number of organizations that provide support to immigrant students and their families, including the College Assistance Migrant Program, Engaging Latino Communities for Education, El Centro de la Raza and the College Enrichment Program.

Santa Fe Community College president Randy Grissom says finances shouldn't be an obstacle that keeps students from pursuing a degree. He encourages potential students to visit the campus and meet with specialists about enrollment requirements and financial aid options, including scholarship opportunities through partnerships with the school's foundation and organizations like the Institute for Mexicans Abroad of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Mexico.

"The consulate's office in Albuquerque established the IME Becas Scholarship Program four years ago to benefit students of Mexican origin and descent. The funds are matched by our foundation for a total program amount of about $50,000," says Grissom.

The school's foundation, Grissom notes, also offers its own Contract for a Better Tomorrow Scholarship. It provides help to students who are in the first generation of their family to attend college.

"Students who meet the criteria and are selected for this scholarship receive a biweekly allowance that can be used for any purpose, as long as they maintain a certain grade point average and progress toward their degree," says Grissom. "These and other scholarship options help put an SFCC degree within reach for students."

While immigrant students and their families wait for Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform laws to provide them a path to citizenship, they're headed to class to become engineers, scientists, social workers and health care workers.

SFR caught up with four students willing to share their stories and post-graduation plans.

Undocumented and Unafraid

Juan Carlos Deoses, 25
Master's Degree in Social Work
New Mexico Highlands University
Graduation: May 7

Interest in social justice began to stir during Deoses' teen years. That's when he saw how community outreach programs impact immigrants' lives in Santa Fe.

Deoses isn't sitting on the sidelines waiting for others to fight his battles. He learned to champion change at street protests and Roundhouse rallies. He fought for driver's licenses for immigrants and has been pushing Congress to reform immigration laws that he hopes will provide a clear path to citizenship for his mother and himself.

But like other young men, going to college and improving his life seemed to occupy most of Deoses' thoughts.

"As I became more aware of my immigration status, I'd ask myself what I was going to do. 'How do I fit in?'" Deoses tells SFR.

To thrive as an adult, Deoses knew school was critical, but he says when he graduated from high school in 2007, he still didn't know anything about the state law that allowed him to attend college despite his immigration status. At the time, he says, no one at Capital High School seemed to know anything about it either.

Without guidance, and feeling depressed about his future, Deoses set out to navigate the system on his own. Along the way, he met people like Mary Louise Romero, a juvenile justice program manager in Santa Fe, who offered to mentor him and who pushed him to pursue his dreams and his education.

In 2010, he earned his associate degree two years after discovering he was eligible to enroll at Santa Fe Community College. Since then, Deoses has co-founded New Mexico Dreamers in Action and worked as a paralegal assistant with immigration attorneys Victoria Ferrara and Allegra Love; before the 2008 presidential election, he helped register 3,500 eligible new voters.

Those experiences convinced Deoses that public service is in his blood.

Earlier this year, he began working as a healthy transitions program manager at Santa Fe Mountain Center, a nonprofit that works with homeless, LGBT, Native American and immigrant children at risk for dropping out of school.

On a compound nestled into the trees off County Road 73 in Tesuque, Deoses spends his days teaching the teens to scale rock walls and persuading them to continue their education. It's an exercise he knows will help the young people, who are often wearing court-ordered ankle bracelets, gain confidence and overcome life's challenges.

Deoses' ultimate goal: make sure at-risk teens know that they have a legal right to apply for college. In fact, Deoses is on a mission to correct misinformation he claims is still provided to students in high school and says he won't rest until every immigrant student knows that state law allows them to enroll in college programs, whether they have a Social Security card or not.

"Many of our immigrant students don't know their rights," says Deoses. "We've learned that many haven't planned to go on to college because they don't know they can. They still don't know it's a possibility for them."

Deoses says his own experience and achievements should persuade lawmakers and other people that having an educated, bilingual and multicultural workforce in New Mexico benefits the state economy.

To that end, after he settles into his new job, Deoses says he wants to find a way that his group can work with Santa Fe schools to help students apply for college or vocational training programs after high school; he says he hopes lawmakers will provide additional funding to promote awareness of the 10-year-old law.

Legal Eagle

Mabel Arrellanes, 29
University of New Mexico Law School
Graduation: December 2015

Yet working and raising an infant wouldn't be the end of Arrellanes' education.

Still carrying her son, Arrellanes landed a legal secretary's position with Santa Fe attorney Linda Hemphill, who urged Arrellanes to get back to her books.

"I was fascinated with the law and decided to become an attorney," she tells SFR.

At first, Arrellanes worried that the bar she'd set for herself was too high. Life hadn't dealt her many good cards growing up. Her father had been involved in the Mexican drug trade and was killed in a gunfight four months after she was born in Chihuahua. Her mother escaped kidnappers and fled to Santa Fe, where she later enrolled Arrellanes in kindergarten.

A decade and a half later, with her own child learning to walk, Arrellanes set her sights on becoming the first in her family to graduate high school. But during a visit to Capital High School, a campus counselor, she remembers, mocked her dreams of becoming a litigator.

"She laughed out loud and told me, 'Mijita, you'll never be a lawyer. You don't have a Social Security number, so you can't go to college. You should just get a GED and go back to work.' It was the worst experience of my life," she says. Arrellanes dried her tears and decided to prove the counselor wrong.

But first, she needed to figure out a way to keep her car from getting towed from the school parking lot. Arrellanes and other immigrant students racked up tickets because the school wouldn't issue them parking permits. At the time, it was illegal for them to hold a state driver's license.

After joining ENLACE, a statewide initiative designed to strengthen the educational pipeline and increase college opportunities for Latinos, Arrellanes began to advocate for a law to allow immigrants to get driver's licenses.

"I had never stepped foot inside the Capitol and didn't know how to lobby for that," says Arrellanes.

Advocates at Somos Un Pueblo Unido became Arrellanes' tour guide at the Roundhouse.

After they succeeded, the group parlayed their triumph and persuaded lawmakers to draft another law allowing all students to enroll in college and pay in-state tuition rates.

It was a challenge that would change their lives. Lawmakers finally passed the law, which also enables students to qualify for the Lottery Scholarship regardless of immigration status if they maintain decent grades.

In 2010, Arrellanes graduated from the University of New Mexico magna cum laude, with a double major in English and political science.

Her law school dreams were closer than ever, but it appeared to be out of her financial reach. Confident in her abilities, Arrellanes took out $55,000 in private loans, and after earning a good LSAT entrance exam score, she became the first recipient of a new $5,000 scholarship named after retired New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Patricio M Serna.

"Law school has changed my life," she says, sitting in one of the school's gardens in between classes. "It's opened a lot of doors for me."

Her studies in law also opened her eyes to the problems facing illegal immigrants picked up for deportation. Eventually, she'd like to become a public defender and protect immigrants' rights before families are separated, but she worries that her own legal status could block her from pursuing job opportunities with the government.

Serna, who also provides Arrellanes mentorship and tips on legal writing needed to succeed in law school, tells SFR he has no doubts that she is a rising star. "She's worked so hard for everything," says Serna. "She is really a whiz."

While Serna urges Arrellanes to apply for a coveted clerkship at the New Mexico Supreme Court, she wonders if her old high school counselor will still have a smirk on her face when she passes the New Mexico State Bar exam.

Paving the Path to a Bright Future

Udell Calzadillas Chavez, 20
University of New Mexico
Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Spanish
Graduation: May 8

At the time, Calzadillas Chavez was hoping that Congress would pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

Disappointed by the gridlock in the nation's capital, he refocused his energy on schoolwork and was appointed president of the University of New Mexico Dream Team (set up to push immigration reform).

After being elected to the UNM Student Senate for one term, Calzadillas Chavez helped draft a message for Gov. Susana Martinez, explaining that students opposed her effort to repeal driver's licenses for immigrants; he also co-sponsored a resolution to remove Columbus Day from UNM's school holidays and worked on a resolution decrying Islamophobia on campus.

With Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and a Social Security card, Calzadillas Chavez was able to travel outside of the country for the first time without worrying about getting across the border and home to New Mexico.

He spent a semester studying in Puerto Rico last year before graduating with honors and a 3.83 grade point average.

While on the island, the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute invited him to Chicago and awarded him their prestigious Dr. Juan Andrade Jr. Scholarship. Six months later, El Centro de la Raza selected Calzadillas Chavez to be their El Puente Program Fellow. He also won the Garnet G Starkey & Clyde E Starkey Scholarship Award, which allowed him to complete his Spanish language program at UNM.

Calzadillas Chavez, who now works part time at the Mexican consulate in Albuquerque, tells SFR he hasn't decided what he'll do next, but law school is on his mind. "My dream school is the London School of Economics," he says. "I'd like to study international law there."

He plans to spend the summer studying to take the GRE and LSAT. Calzadillas Chavez tells SFR he'll also apply to graduate schools in California.

No matter what he decides, it is clear that Calzadillas Chavez strives for excellence. With natural charisma and leadership skills he's learned as a community and student activist, Calzadillas Chavez could easily become a politician. He says he'd consider running for Santa Fe City Council, if his immigration status isn't still a barrier.

But he's also pondering the idea of leaving Santa Fe for a few years. He smiles when he talks about going to Europe and seems to cherish the idea of working as an international lawyer, perhaps prosecuting war criminals inside the Hague.

That's a long way from unsuccessfully trying to enroll at the University of New Mexico.

Calzadillas Chavez, who speaks English, Spanish, French and Arabic, remembers an admissions department employee asking him why he didn't have a Social Security number, since he'd already earned some college credits from the Master's Program at Monte del Sol Charter School.

"She sent me away to get more paperwork. When I returned, another lady was there to help and enrolled me without any problems," says Calzadillas Chavez.

Speaking about the other "dreamers" highlighted in SFR's story, he says, "I hope all our success in the past few years has given other immigrant students hope."

It's clear that he turned his own hopes into reality. Now, the sharply dressed young man, who walked across the graduation stage with his head held high and proud, strides into the future knowing that he's helped pave the path for future students.

Building a Better Life

Andrea Gonzalez
Santa Fe Community College
Dental Assistant Certificate
Graduation: July 30

"It's so close I can feel it," Gonzalez says. "I just need to finish my clinical work now."

When she does, Gonzalez tells SFR she hopes to use her training to provide dental care to other immigrants living in her community.

It's a decision she made attending Santa Fe Capital High School's Medical Sciences Academy.

"There have been times when I was so stressed out I just wanted to give up," she says. "I'd be crying at the kitchen table, but my mom kept telling me to 'graduate and be someone.'"

Gonzalez didn't quit. With a 3.5 grade point average in high school, and after a temporary hold to check her eligibility as an undocumented student, Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center awarded her a $750 Bridge Program Scholarship toward her tuition at the community college.

Like other undocumented students, Gonzalez didn't qualify for federal grant money and worried that she still wouldn't have enough funds to cover her books and living expenses. She says she tried saving money for school, but without a Social Security number, the only job she could find was babysitting. She earned some cash, but not enough to save for college.

Her job prospects improved three years ago, when President Barack Obama signed an executive order deferring deportation actions for childhood immigrants like Gonzalez. She applied, and after paying a steep DACA application fee, Gonzalez landed a job in a bridal boutique, but the extra money didn't ease her concerns altogether.

Gonzalez came to Santa Fe from Zacatecas, Mexico, when she was almost 3 years old, after her father, an accomplished landscaper, sent money to bring her, her mother and an older sister across the border.

While most students worry about acne, getting a date to the prom or being accepted by their peers, Gonzalez remembers being unable to focus on all her class assignments. While her favorite high school teacher, Natalie Garcia, refused to let her quit, Gonzalez was often distracted and frightened, mostly that her parents would get deported and not be at home when she returned from school.

"Everyone always knows when Immigration [and Customs Enforcement agents are] in town," she says. "You never know if they'll stop by your house and ask your parents for their green card to determine their status."

Gonzalez' parents worried too, but since they had only reached the sixth grade, they continued to push their children to do well in school.

It's a lesson Gonzalez is passing down to her younger brother, a US citizen born in Santa Fe, and his friends.

Gonzalez says she'll continue to study after her graduation this summer. She's required to take a state exam before she can assist dentists, but with good grades and encouragement, her professional career is set to take off.

When it does, Gonzalez hopes to buy a house, get a new car and start traveling.

Down the road, Gonzalez says she'll consider going back to school. She's already thinking about becoming a licensed dental hygienist.

Santa Fe Reporter