Politics & Government

Undocumented Pebblebrook Student Speaks Out After Arrest

Nataly Ibarra tells her story about the demonstration at the Capitol on Tuesday.

By Tuesday afternoon, Nataly Ibarra, a 16-year-old student at Pebblebrook High School, and five other undocumented young immigrants hadn’t slept in nearly two days and they each had been arrested and either released or transferred to county jail.

Nataly was one of three juveniles released Tuesday after protesting the state’s new immigration reform legislation at the Georgia State Capitol by blocking an intersection.

The legislation, the Illegal Immigrant and Enforcement Act of 2011, is set to become law on Friday. However, on Monday, a federal judge paused two of the most controversial provisions of the bill. One of those provisions would empower law enforcement officials to request citizenship documentation from persons who are suspected of committing a crime and another provision would punish people who knowingly give rides to or harbor illegal immigrants.

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Those provisions are on hold pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by civil rights organizations, like the ACLU.

Nataly and her four other Pebblebrook classmates, Leeidy Solis and Rolando Zenteno, both 16, Dulce Guerrero and Jessica Vasquez, both 18, were training over the last couple of days for Tuesday’s protest with 24-year-old Felipe Baeza from New York.

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They rehearsed their speeches about how they immigrated to the United States at very young ages with their families.

At nearly 2 p.m. on Tuesday, all six of them stood, wearing black or navy graduation cap and gowns, in front of a large crowd at the Georgia State Capitol. Fueled by adrenaline and the energy of the supporters, they forgot what they had rehearsed and spoke what came to them.

Nataly could feel the butterflies she had, a result of her nervousness and fear.

“We didn’t know what to feel. But I’d look to my sides and I remembered I’m not going through this alone. I have five other people doing this same thing with me,” Nataly said.

After they each told their stories of how they were brought here at ages 2 to 10, their confidence grew as did the crowd, both inside and outside the Capitol.

For Nataly, one thing had more impact than anything else then.

She saw her friend, Dulce, one of the strongest people she knew, wipe tears from her eyes as she told her story of being brought here at age 2. She lived as an American. Her parents worked hard. She worked hard in school, taking Advanced Placement courses and excelling in them, only to be told that she cannot attend any of the state’s top schools because she was not a legal immigrant.

(In October, the Georgia Board of Regents barred undocumented students from attending the state’s top five public universities.)

The young immigrants were joined by local civil rights leaders, like Rev. Timothy McDonald, senior pastor of the First Iconium Baptist Church.

The six, being called by some the Georgia 6, walked together outside and sat on a banner that read in huge red letters, “We will no longer remain in the shadows,” in the middle of the intersection of Martin Luther King Drive and Washington Street.

Nataly thought to herself: I’m really doing this. I’m going to get arrested. How is my family going to feel about me getting arrested?

Her parents, along with the parents of the other five young people, watched on in the 200-person crowd, which lurched towards them and surrounded them as they blocked the intersection.

They yelled and chanted phrases like, “Undocumented and unafraid.”

And at that moment, Nataly felt a wave of emotions at once.

“You’re sad. You’re mad. You’re happy,” Nataly said, and she couldn’t help thinking at that moment, “You can’t do anything to me because all these people are here to support me.”

Nataly didn’t know it, but the event was being streamed live online, and those supporters watched on from all over the country. She was representing, along with her five peers, the 74,000 undocumented students in Georgia and throughout the United States.

As the Capitol Police placed the handcuffs on her and made their way through the sea of people, she began to fear how her parents would react and worried how long she’d be detained.

Although the six had been trained on how to handle hostile police, they never had to use any of their training, Nataly said.

The police were civil and some were even “supportive,” she said, explaining that they had to arrest them because it was their job to do so.

“I had no fear when I was in there. It’s crazy. You might even get deported, you know?” the teen explained only an hour after being released from the detention center.

Her mother, an undocumented immigrant, and her father, now a U.S. citizen, were there when Nataly was released. The sun was going down at this time, and the crowd had definitely dwindled.

The older three were not released because they are adults. They were transferred to Fulton County Jail.

Nataly said they will find a way to help get the three released from jail, and that she’s proud of all of them.

“I made a change. It felt really good to me because we were all together,” she said. “The message we’re trying to send is that it’s been too many times that we’ve waited for someone else to do something. This isn’t a time to be scared anymore. This is a time to stand up.”

She said now other young people across the country seeing that they were able to stand up will do the same.

For more information on the Georgia 6 or this movement, now known as The Dream Is Coming, visit: http://www.thedreamiscoming.com


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