Pedro Guzman was released last week from a Georgia detention center.

The Dylan Ratigan show reports on Tony Wasilewski and the film “Tony and Janina’s American Wedding”. Tony was featured last year on http://weareamericastories.org. More at http://tonyandjanina.com/

Princess Martinez was born and raised in south Texas. She and her six daughters are U.S. citizens, but her husband is not. Last year, he was deported after a DUI arrest, and the whole family moved just south of the border to Mexico. Then, the family faced an increasingly common dilemma: where to educate U.S. citizen children after a non-citizen parent is deported.

from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/after-deportation-a-family-divided/2011/04/30/AF7owKOF_video.html

Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Logan's dad, Pedro Guzman, 30, in front of the family's Durham, N.C., home on Sept. 28, 2009. Logan and his mother, Emily, could only look on.

A group of students, many of whom identified themselves as in the country illegally, watched the debate and cheered afterward. Many wore graduation gowns to signal their enthusiasm for education. (Some are pictured to the left with Sen. Victor Ramirez who sponsored the bill. Photo credit: Julie Bykowicz.)

March 08, 2011 - The Maryland Senate is scheduled to take up a bill this week that would allow the children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at state colleges. A group of students who support the legislation have been rallying in Annapolis.

Yves Gomes would benefit from the DREAM Act. When Gomes was just over a year old, his parents brought him from India to the United States on a tourist visa. The family later sought asylum but failed and fell out of status. Gomes’ father and mother have already been deported. After graduating from high school in June 2010, Gomes was also facing deportation.

Isabel Castillo was counting on the Dream Act, and when the Dream Act was defeated in December, it upended her dreams.

from “John Quinones Goes Undercover” on ABC’s What Would You Do?

After 18 years in America, Tony and Janina Wasilewski's family is torn apart when Janina is deported back to Poland, taking their 6 year old son with her. Set on the backdrop of the Chicago political scene, and featuring Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez at the heart of the immigration reform movement, this documentary follows the family's three year struggle to be reunited. Bob talks with director RUTH LEITMAN about "Tony and Janina's American Wedding."

(includes link to We Are America video) Upon retiring from military service, Muhammad Zahid Chaudhry received a United States flag and a letter of thanks, calling him a hero whose service to America would never be forgotten. Due to injuries Chaudhry sustained while serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Chaudhry now uses a wheelchair.

from Dallas Morning News, January 28, 2010

Olga Zanella , 20, grew up in Irving, Texas. She found out she was in the country illegally during her junior year of high school, after attending a college financial aid workshop.

Saad Nabeel doesn't get much sleep these days. Holed up in an undisclosed location in Malaysia, the lanky 20-year-old spends his nights furtively working to bring himself back to America, the only home he's ever known.

Steve Li was featured on We Are America earlier this year.

Until November 2009, Saad Nabeel was an ambitious engineering student at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Then came his family's arrest by U.S. immigration authorities and deportation to Bangladesh, which he had left as a toddler.

Pedro Gutierrez, 22, is an illegal immigrant who was brought to Arizona by his grandmother when he was 7 years old. He says life in Arizona is all he knows.

A disabled former Washington National Guard soldier got to go home to Lacey after his immigration hearing ended Wednesday, but he still could be deported to his native Pakistan later this year.

Muhammad Zahid Chaudhry, a decorated disabled American veteran, is the victim of a witch hunt that has been ongoing since the 9/11 attacks.

“Bleak hopes for immigrant children hoping to become educated.” ABC news reports on the failure of the DREAM Act by featuring Diego Alvarez, who originally appeared on We Are America.

NY Times article on the failure of DREAM features Alina Cortes and Bernard Pastor, both featured stories on We Are America

One month ago, Bernard Pastor was an anonymous 18-year-old trying to live his life productively as a church volunteer but in the shadows as an undocumented immigrant.

Detained as an unlicensed driver following a minor auto accident the night of Nov. 17 in Springdale, Pastor found himself on the fast track to deportation to his native Guatemala. Two Ohio Democrat lawmakers, who learned of Pastor’s case from Enquirer reports, intervened on his behalf and gained a three-week delay.

On a cold and sunny morning in late November, as sharp winds stirred up fallen leaves, and most folks were beginning to slow down in anticipation of Thanksgiving, Shing Ma “Steve” Li, a 20-year-old nursing student from San Francisco who narrowly avoided deportation to Peru, whipped the local media into a energized frenzy by advocating for the passage of the DREAM Act during a press conference

Gaby Pacheco, a 25 year-old undocumented immigrant whose parents brought her from Ecuador to the United States at age 7, has been an outspoken advocate for DREAM since 2004.

Letter to the editor from Alina Cortes: "As her Republican constituent, I am disappointed Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison changed her stance on the DREAM Act."

"Many of us come from families with mixed (immigration) status. We can't vote, but our families and friends can," said Julieta Garibay, 29, one of the original "Dreamers" who has pushed for the Dream Act since it was first introduced in Congress in 2001.

The intent of the stories at We Are America is to create a public discourse on immigration law that includes the immigrant voice.

Gomes is one of thousands of young illegal immigrants who grew up in the United States and are now studying at American colleges and universities. He is doing well in his studies, but he is fighting deportation to India, a country he left with his parents when he was just 14 months old. They were deported more than a year ago.

Julieta Garibay came to the country when she was 12 and grew up in Texas, where she got her undergrad and then masters degrees in nursing from the University of Texas at Austin. “I consider myself an Austinite,” she said, but because she’s undocumented, she hasn’t been able to put her nursing degree to use the way she wants to. So she’s been fighting for the DREAM Act, a bill that would offer undocumented students like her a pathway to citizenship.

Him Ranjit's lack of legal immigration status wasn't a problem in elementary or middle school, but as he became older, life in Euless got harder.

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/11/24/2657353/university-of-texas-at-arlington.html#ixzz174xnXlNj

Alina Cortes, 19, told Efe that she learned of her undocumented status when, shortly before graduating from high school, she was notified that she did not qualify for a scholarship or government grants for going to college.

"I had to study with the aid of private scholarships and the efforts of my family," said Cortes, a Mexico City native attending college in Texas who also wants to become a Marine.

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2010/12/01/undocumented-students-want-justice/#ixzz174wlntFq

As Congress prepares this week to vote on a bill that could provide a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young people, the Center for Community Change’s “We Are America” stories project released more “DREAM” stories this week.

"At first my parents said, 'What are you doing? You're risking so much,' " said David Cho, the UCLA drum major. "But I told them, 'It's not only me. There are thousands of students like me trapped in a broken system. Unless our generation speaks out, the politicians won't tackle it. They have to see our faces.' "

Article features Steve Li and Fredd Reyes, two DREAM students who's stories are at We Are America

But the personal stories of today’s immigrants are all too often lost amid the bickering over immigration reform. For that reason, a Center for Community Change project called “We Are America” is trying to bring the main characters in these stories to the forefront.

Right now it's a dream deferred. A dream for people like Michael Nazario, a young man who grew up in Arizona and wants nothing more than to serve in the Marines. Or Carlos Roa, a 23-year-old man who is now studying architecture after being denied an opportunity to enlist in the armed forces.

Federal immigration officials are releasing San Francisco college student Steve Li, who was jailed for more than two months as officials sought to deport him to Peru.

I do not know whether, like countless American teenagers, Yves Gomes will be watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I this weekend. If he does, he will probably not recognize himself in the film. Gomes has no lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. But like Harry, 17-year-old Gomes is bespectacled, owlishly serious, an unlikely warrior thrust into a battle much bigger than him. It’s a fight that has already claimed his parents.

The We Are America campaign was started in July by a group called the Center for Community Change, a group that advocates for low-income communities and minority communities.

Burke Stansbury, project coordinator for the We Are America, said he was glad to hear other groups are sponsoring similar efforts.

"Unfortunately, in the current political dialogue, the human side of immigration is not being recognized," Stansbury said.

This is all about new Americans becoming a part of their new home. To that end, Rim Abera and the other volunteers working to educate and engage immigrant voters, are the future. And that's what has the GOP, and the teabaggers, so scared.

Twenty-year-old Bianca Rojo doesn’t take voting lightly. Five years ago, immigration authorities deported her parents to Mexico because they were in the U.S. illegally. Rojo’s parents took her two younger brothers with them.

Of course, considering this story was unfolding in its own backyard, you’d think the Times might consider doing a little original reporting of its own, rather than just copying and pasting the AP’s inflammatory headline: “In Washington, illegal immigrants canvassing for Democrats.” And if they had, they might of spoken to volunteers like Rima Abera, a 20 year-old college student and Franklin High grad.

In the late 1980s, Tony Wasilewski met his wife Janina in Chicago after they both left communist Poland. They had a son together and the three of them lived in suburban Schiller Park until 2007, when Janina was deported.

In August NewsHour Extra published a student voice from 18-year-old Yves Gomes to President Obama about his immigration status in the United States.

Ivan Nikolov, 22, of Roseville and his wife, Alanna Woolley, 21, spend time with their dogs. Nikolov has been in the U.S. since he was 11, but the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office says his parents brought him to the country illegally. ICE is moving to deport him.

Included below is a letter written by a former University of Texas at Arlington student, Saad Nabeel, who came to the U.S. as a toddler and was schooled in the U.S. education system.

Two weeks before Christmas 2008 in the surreal light of dawn, Yvette Jimenez-Mota heard the heavy boots, stern voices and mysterious whispers.

"I kind of ignored it because I thought it was part of my dream," she recalls. So the teenager went back to sleep, only to wake up to a nightmare.

Yves Gomes was present at today's event and told his story. After the making of his We Are America video, photographer Sara Lewkowicz followed Yves during the anxious week in which he couldn't bear to start packing his suitcase.

PHOENIX - A group of Valley students held a 'boot camp' outside the offices of Arizona Sen. John McCain Saturday to bring attention to the plight of an undocumented student trying to become a U.S. Marine.

PHOENIX - A group of Valley students held a 'boot camp' outside the offices of Arizona Sen. John McCain Saturday to bring attention to the plight of an undocumented student trying to become a U.S. Marine.

Michael Nazario, a 21-year-old illegal immigrant, said he wants to join the U.S. Marine Corps to fight for and defend the only country he's ever practically known, but his legal status forbids him from enlisting. "I have been waiting for a chance to serve this country," he said. "I consider this my home...

"The first step is to stop apologizing," says Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change. "We have ideas; we are often cowed by the ferociousness of the argument from conservatives."

He joined the “We are America” campaign by the Center for Community Change, allowing them to record his story to press for immigration reform. He even spoke at his local church. “I was nervous, I don’t like speaking to large crowds,” he says. “But we passed out fliers asking people to write to the local congress representative. I was really grateful.”

Participants at a Sept. 15 rally near the U.S. Capitol were invigorated in their fight for immigration reform by the previous day's announcement of an upcoming Senate vote on a measure to help children of undocumented immigrants work toward legal status and get a college education.

Meet Beth, a mother of four children, a wife, a police officer. Hear her story. Special thanks to We Are America, which provides a “story bank” via video, audio, and other methods to tell personal, true stories from the immigration front lines.

Yves Gomes featured as part of a project of the PBS Newshour:

"I just graduated from high school in Burtonsville, MD this past June.... However, I’ve had a looming order for deportation from this country (USA). I spent the last year restlessly awaiting my unknown future. But until recently, thanks to the work of my lawyer and organizations such as the We Are America project, the Center for Community Change and my family and friends, I was able to get a Deferred Action and now I am ecstatic because I can stay in the United States."

Front page story in the Washington Post features Yves Gomes and the We Are America project:

"Activists at the Center for Community Change in Washington made Gomes a video poster child for the impact of deportation on families. The center featured Gomes in a "We are America" series of immigrant stories, circulated on the Internet."

Whatever your opinion on immigration policy, it is essential to know – behind the headlines and the politics – exactly whom you are talking about: Kids like Yves Gomez, 17, of Maryland, who has been in this country since he was 1 ½ years old and is scheduled to be deported to India on Friday; or Gladys Martinez, from Mexico, who says that high school in this country changed her world. “I always listened and believed what my teachers told me,” Martinez writes on the web site We Are America.

Let's not continue talking about immigration reform in the abstract. Instead, let's consider Yves, Carlos and Montserrat when we talk about what path we should pursue.

Yves Gomes story, a featured story on We Are America, got good coverage on the Allen Hunt Show

A re-publication of the "We Are America" weekly digest for July 28

The immigrants featured in the video and audio interviews are facing bureaucratic nightmares that would put Kafka to shame. Watching these stories, collected by the Center for Community Change in Washington, even opponents of immigration reform might appreciate how hard it is to comply with a system that has collapsed into dysfunction.

Activists are using the internet to put a human face on the immigration debate. As more states consider passing enforcement laws like the one in Arizona, immigrant rights groups say their opponents are demonizing the 12 million people who live in the U.S. illegally.

On July 22 CNN interviewed Carlos Roa, who is one of our featured stories on "We Are America"

On July 9 the popular Spanish television station Univision featured "We Are America" project coordinator Burke Stansbury on it's evening news discussing the project.

El 7 de Julio el Centro para el Cambio Comunitario (CCC) lanzó una campaña de gran importancia en National Press Club llamada “Somos América,” un proyecto de historias, diseñado para mostrar la diversidad y la humanidad de los inmigrantes en la lucha real contra la narrativa de la oposición.

'Nosotros somos Estados Unidos' busca dar una buena imagen de los inmigrantes y combatir los estereotipos negativos respecto a ese segmento de la población

Launch of “We Are America” Stories project. Opening remarks by Mary Lassen, managing director at CCC; speeches by Ana Sol Gutierrez and Saif Khan, participants in the project, as well as Colin Rogero, director of Revolution Media.