09-05-2017, 06:02 AM
Alonso Guillen came to the U.S. from Mexico as a child. He died here, too: On Wednesday, he disappeared when his boat capsized while he was rescuing survivors of the flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey in the Houston area.
Family members recovered his body on Sunday from a creek in Spring, Texas, according to The Houston Chronicle ― just hours before reports emerged that President Donald Trump will end the program that shielded Guillen and others like him ― so-called Dreamers ― from deportation.
Guillen, a 31-year-old disc jockey who came to Texas from Mexico as a teenager, never became a U.S. citizen. But he had a work permit and protection from immediate deportation as part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program ― DACA ― that then-President Barack Obama established in 2012.
Last week, he headed south from his home in Lufkin, Texas, with a borrowed boat, insisting he wanted to help rescue flood survivors. His father, a legal permanent resident, wept on the sandy banks of Cypress Creek on Sunday as his son’s body was pulled from the water, the Chronicle reported. Jesus Guillen recounted to the paper how he asked his son not to go on the rescue mission with two friends, and that he thanked God for the time he had with his son.
His mother, Rita Ruiz de Guillen, was contacted by Chronicle at her home in Piedras Negras, Mexico. “I’m asking God to give me strength,” she said.
She also told the paper that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials denied her entry at the border, despite her pleas for a temporary visa to come to Texas for her son’s burial.
On Monday, however, the customs and border agency said it had no record of Guillen’s mother applying for admission to the U.S. in 2017.
In a statement, the agency said it has “offered to work with the Mexican Consulate and non-governmental agencies” to allow her entry “in order to attend her son’s funeral.”
The agency also offered its condolences to Alonso Guillen’s family.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alon...mg00000009
Family members recovered his body on Sunday from a creek in Spring, Texas, according to The Houston Chronicle ― just hours before reports emerged that President Donald Trump will end the program that shielded Guillen and others like him ― so-called Dreamers ― from deportation.
Guillen, a 31-year-old disc jockey who came to Texas from Mexico as a teenager, never became a U.S. citizen. But he had a work permit and protection from immediate deportation as part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program ― DACA ― that then-President Barack Obama established in 2012.
Last week, he headed south from his home in Lufkin, Texas, with a borrowed boat, insisting he wanted to help rescue flood survivors. His father, a legal permanent resident, wept on the sandy banks of Cypress Creek on Sunday as his son’s body was pulled from the water, the Chronicle reported. Jesus Guillen recounted to the paper how he asked his son not to go on the rescue mission with two friends, and that he thanked God for the time he had with his son.
His mother, Rita Ruiz de Guillen, was contacted by Chronicle at her home in Piedras Negras, Mexico. “I’m asking God to give me strength,” she said.
She also told the paper that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials denied her entry at the border, despite her pleas for a temporary visa to come to Texas for her son’s burial.
On Monday, however, the customs and border agency said it had no record of Guillen’s mother applying for admission to the U.S. in 2017.
In a statement, the agency said it has “offered to work with the Mexican Consulate and non-governmental agencies” to allow her entry “in order to attend her son’s funeral.”
The agency also offered its condolences to Alonso Guillen’s family.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alon...mg00000009
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.