Judge orders deportation of Arizona immigration activist
Dec 14, 2018, 7:23 AM | Updated: Dec 16, 2018, 6:45 pm
(Twitter Photo)
(Twitter Photo)
PHOENIX – An Arizona immigration rights activist has been ordered out of the country after a judge revoked her green card, and also denied her petitions for asylum.
A federal judge in Tucson ruled this week that Alejandra Pablos, 33, had to leave, pointing to criminal convictions from 2005 to 2010, the Arizona Daily Star reported.
Pablos has been working for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health in Annandale, Virginia since 2016, according to the Washington Post.
Pablos, who said she was born in Nogales, Mexico, but brought to the United States as a baby, became a legal permanent resident.
She served two years in a detention center in Eloy, Arizona, for DUI, endangerment and solicitation to possess a dangerous drug.
In court Tuesday, she told Judge Thomas Michael O’Leary that her life would be danger in Mexico, but he said she wouldn’t qualify for asylum because reproductive rights activists weren’t deemed a group in need of protection.
Pablos was arrested in March when she traveled to Phoenix to check in with immigration officials. She was kept at the Eloy detention center for 43 days.
Two months before that arrest, Pablos was charged with trespassing and obstructing justice for participating in a protest at a Homeland Security building.
Pablos’ supporters believe her activism made her a target of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which the agency denied.
A petition asking Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to pardon the 2010 DUI arrest has amassed more than 16,000 signatures this week.
The goal was 25,600 signatures.
Pablos said she would appeal the decision.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
