Shes Fighting Cancer. Her Son Is Fighting Her Deportation. – The New York Times

Mr. Padilla Romero has reached out to Ms. Feldblum, who is a founder of the Presidents Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, which advocates on behalf of immigrant students. This is someone who exemplifies the engaged student scholar on campus, said Ms. Feldblum, whose organization is made up of university presidents and chancellors.

At Yale, Mr. Padilla Romeros classmates have been strategizing with him, calling members of Congress in Connecticut and Georgia and sending queries to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that is moving to deport his mother, to demand her release.

When stuff like this comes up you drop everything, said Joshua Aiken, a doctoral student in history and African-American studies, who prepared a script for Yale students to use when telephoning ICE. Peoples families are being torn apart every day by cruel and unethical deportation policies, and so the minute Cristian told me what was happening, it was time to mobilize.

Alicia Schmidt Camacho, chair and professor of ethnicity, race and migration at Yale, said Mr. Padilla Romero, who is her student, had made a decision to be a scholar in Central American studies to address the root cause of the crisis that undocumented families are enduring.

Now hes using his own struggle to shed light on the devastating impact of deportation on our communities, she said.

Ms. Romero, 48, crossed the border illegally two decades ago and raised four children in Atlanta, juggling jobs as a housekeeper, dishwasher and laundromat attendant, sometimes all at once. Eventually, she got a full-time job in construction.

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Shes Fighting Cancer. Her Son Is Fighting Her Deportation. - The New York Times