Ximena Arias-Cristobal has actually resided in Georgia’s Whitfield County because she was 4 years of ages.
On Monday, Dalton Authorities Department officers pulled over the 19-year-old university student for apparently making a prohibited best turn at a traffic signal. She informed officers she didn’t have her global motorist’s license on her, according to an authorities report, and she was collared.
Now she deals with the possibility of being deported from the nation in addition to her household.
Arias-Cristobal was using chains around her wrists and ankles when she was relocated to a Migration and Customs Enforcement detention center today, according to loved ones.
Online records evaluated by The Independent reveal she is imprisoned inside the Stewart Detention Center, approximately 4 hours far from Dalton in Lumpkin, home to among the biggest and most infamous migration detention centers in the nation, run by personal jail company CoreCivic, previously the Corrections Corporation of America. A minimum of 10 individuals passed away in the center in between 2017 and 2024, according to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union, which had actually formerly slammed the center for insufficient conditions and due procedure infractions.
Arias-Cristobal’s moms and dads did not have legal authorization to go into the United States from Mexico in 2010 when she was a young child, and she did not get approved for Deferred Action for Youth Arrivals program, which ended the year before her household got in the nation, according to household pals.
She is not anticipated to appear before a migration judge for numerous weeks, and she is separated from her relative– other than one. Her dad Jose Francisco Arias-Tovar was just recently apprehended after going 19 miles over the speed limitation and is inside the exact same ICE detention center, according to online records.
” The household will have the ability to go back to Mexico together,” Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated in a declaration to The Independent.
” Mr. Tovar had adequate chance to look for a legal path to citizenship. He selected not to. We are not disregarding the guideline of law,” she included.
The Trump administration’s CBP Home app “is providing moms and dads unlawfully in the nation a possibility to take complete control of their departure and self-deport, with the possible capability to return the legal, best method and return to live the American dream,” McLaughlin stated.
Arias-Cristobal is a current graduate of Dalton High School and a cross nation professional athlete now participating in Dalton State College. She was registered for the spring 2025 term, a college representative informed The Independent.
The household concerned the United States “with huge dreams due to the fact that they desired a huge future for my older sis,” Arias-Cristobal’s more youthful sis informed Georgia’s WTVC NewsChannel 9.
” My sis goes to college, and she was an honor trainee because intermediate school. And she runs. She likes to run. It’s her enthusiasm, and the only factor they came is to follow my sis’s dreams,” she stated.
Arias-Cristobal was a sitter for household buddy Hannah Jones for many years, Jones stated.
” We love her,” she composed on a GoFundMe that has actually raised almost $50,000 since this publication.
Republican state Agent Kacey Carpenter is pushing a migration judge for her release.
” The truth is, the discussion has actually constantly been that we require to get tough bad guys out of the nation,” Carpenter informed NewsChannel 9. “Sadly, individuals that aren’t tough bad guys are getting captured up in the wash. It appears like we are better at capturing individuals that are dedicating misdemeanors than individuals that are really a threat to society.”.
Ballot has actually regularly revealed a broad bulk of American assistance legislation that would open a path to long-term legal status for young immigrants gave the United States unlawfully as kids. In January, days before Donald Trump got in workplace, a federal appeals court ruled versus DACA, however the choice did not provide any instant modifications for the program’s more than 500,000 recipients, teeing up a Supreme Court difficulty.
” The frustrating bulk of the American public” supports legal securities for immigrants who got in the nation with their moms and dads as kids, stated Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior Fellow with the American Migration Council.
” It makes no sense to deport this female. We make the U.S.A. even worse off by doing it,” he composed.
The Independent has actually asked for remark from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.
Dalton Authorities is amongst regional police with a “prison enforcement design” contract with ICE, which permits federal officers to “recognize and process detachable aliens– with criminal or pending criminal charges– who are apprehended by state or regional police.”.
The Trump administration is looking for to broaden using those so-called 287( g) arrangements, called after Area 287( g) of the Migration and Citizenship Act, which prepares for collaborations in between regional cops and federal police.
Arias-Cristobal’s arrest follows numerous prominent cases throughout the nation including immigrant households with combined legal statuses, as the president and migration authorities start a sweeping, aggressive anti-immigration program.
The White Home declares to have actually gotten rid of more than 142,000 individuals from the nation within the president’s very first couple of months in workplace, though it’s uncertain how the administration is counting those numbers.