‘Dreamer’ is released after arrest amid protest
Máxima Guerrero stepped outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Phoenix and silenced chants from protesters calling for her release.
The crowd saw Guerrero needed a moment. She buried her head and face into the shoulder of a friend who had been leading protesters in calls over a bullhorn: Free Max!
For what seemed longer than a minute and a half, given the fear and out
cry for the past 24 hours, the two friends wept. So did others in the crowd.
A community organizer with Puente Human Rights Movement and recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Guerrero was in her vehicle leaving Saturday’s protest in Phoenix with a group of legal observers when police arrested her.
After watching George Floyd die as a police officer knelt on his neck until he stopped breathing. After watching protests and civil uprisings spread across Arizona and the country. After watching thousands of arrests nationwide, for many protesters standing in the Arizona heat outside the immigration office, Guerrero’s freedom was the first relief in days.
A relief that many worried wouldn’t come amidst violent clashes with police and the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies that have targeted “Dreamers” and other migrants without a criminal record.
When Mitzi Castro, Guerrero’s best friend, finally let go, she caught her breath, raised the bullhorn again and said: “All right y’all, if you haven’t noticed, Max is out!”
This time, the crowd cheered and clapped, and Guerrero wiped away tears.
“Max is out and surrounded and supported by so many community members, knowing that she’s loved,” Castro said. “Despite everything that’s been going on y’all showed up. This is just showing what’s really happening. Not only to activists, to organizers, but people ... (like) Máxima, she was doing legal observing, was profiled, not only profiled, arrested getting into her car.”
Finally, the person the crowd had waited for was ready to speak.
“I want to thank you all for your solidarity and for coming out, for taking action,” Guerrero said quietly to supporters.
It took Monday’s protest, a flood of calls that filled the voicemail of Sheriff Paul Penzone, Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams and Mayor Kate Gallego and a mass social-media campaign from the community. It took letters of support from at least two state legislators, a state senator, three Latino Phoenix City Council members and more than a dozen other Arizona leaders.
But early Monday, ICE officials released Guerrero. Her attorney is waiting on the paperwork, but he believes though Guerrero was released, she will still face future immigration hearings. And that’s separate from the June hearing she has on criminal charges.
Guerrero is usually on the other end of organizing rallies or actions to release migrants from jail. As a recipient of the DACA program, which provides her temporary legal immigration status, Guerrero has said she feels a responsibility to stand up for others without DACA.
Now, the community is rallying for
Guerrero.
About 40 people gathered Monday morning at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement near downtown Phoenix, including Angeles Maldonado with the office of Máxima’s lawyer, Ray Ybarra Maldonado.
Protesters remained at the ICE facility on Monday as temperatures neared 100 degrees. They called for continued pressure on ICE to release other undocumented migrants who were arrested in the protests.
Organizers asked the community to continue to call, email and tweet at Penzone and Gallego, who they lashed out at for failing communities of color and not using their power and influence to remove ICE from the Maricopa County jail facility.
They said Johan Montes Cuevas and Jesus Orona Prieto, two other undocumented immigrants, remain in custody. The mother and girlfriend of Montes Cuevas wept as they appealed to ICE officials and for community support.
“He needs to go home, he’s a good man,” Montes Cuevas’ girlfriend said.
Ybarra Maldonado, Guerrero’s attorney, said undocumented migrants, even ones with DACA, risk their freedom when they stand up for rights of others at the George Floyd protests.
“It’s just a prime example of how tenuous it is for the most law-abiding, diligent human being, if they don’t have citizenship,” he said. “Their (immigration) status can affect their life, change their life, at any time.”
Ybarra Maldonado said that one of the migrants in custody was having dinner downtown, not protesting, when he was arrested.
Ybarra Maldonado told The Arizona Republic on Monday that he got word at about 3 a.m. that Guerrero was transferred to ICE custody and taken to the immigration field office in downtown Phoenix.
Puente organizers said Guerrero was arrested in Saturday’s protest. Her attorney is criticizing heavy-handed police tactics, saying she was in her vehicle leaving the protest with a group of legal observers when police arrested her.
Her friends and family urged people to flood Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone, Mayor Kate Gallego, Chief Jeri Williams and other council members with phone calls for the release of Guerrero, two other protesters without citizenship and all others arrested.
Guerrero, a community organizer with Puente, gained media attention for launching Ganaz Apparel in 2016. The fitness line is aimed at inspiring activism and healthy living for communities of color.
Puente focused pressure on Penzone, creating a flier with Guerrero’s image, because organizers have long called on the sheriff to remove Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials from Maricopa County jails to stop transfers to detention centers.
In the photo for the flier, Guerrero’s smiling, holding her hands together and in large black text above her head it says: “Sheriff Penzone don’t comply with ICE!”
The flier was spread via social media and once Penzone’s voicemail filled from the slew of calls, organizers urged people to tweet and email the sheriff.
Phoenix Councilman Carlos Garcia told The Arizona Republic late Sunday that he wasn’t at Saturday’s protest, but that Guerrero was leaving the protest with a group of legal observers, including a young woman from his District 8 office. They thought she’d made it home safely until she called them from jail.
Garcia said they spoke with Guerrero from jail on Sunday. He said Guerrero told them that she was in her car leaving when police stopped and arrested her.
Police had declared the protest an unlawful assembly and were clearing the area of anyone who hadn’t followed repeated calls to leave.
Garcia said police should have allowed Guerrero to drive home rather than escalate an already tense situation as people across the state and nation continue protesting for justice for George Floyd and an end to police violence.
Despite Guerrero’s DACA status, she’s in jeopardy, Garcia said. To qualify for the program, migrants must have clean legal records.
The fear, Garcia said, is that Guerrero and anyone without citizenship arrested in the protests could be transferred to ICE, placed in a detention center, where they are at an increased risk of contracting COVID-19, and eventually deported.
Garcia said police were heavy-handed in recommending felony charges against Guerrero and many other people protesting peacefully.
“There’s no probable cause for many of these arrests,” Garcia said. “Everybody got dragged in with a big net. You have 114 people arrested—you don’t know who was doing what.”
Court documents summarizing probable cause for the arrest provided to The Republic state “a large group of subjects gathered in the downtown area to protest recent police involved shootings in the United States.”