Demonstrators showed their support for Roswell High School student Karina Acosta as they waved signs and flags in downtown Roswell in December. Acosta, in the United States illegally, was deported to Mexico.

Mark Wilson / Roswell Daily Record 2007

Related articles:

42 schools fail fed assessment

Health Care
S
Medical Transcriptionist Administrative & Professional
BORDER HEALTH FOUNDATION
PREVENTION TRAINERS Trades/Construction
EVERYREADY GLASS
CSR/AUTO GLASS Sales and Marketing
National CineMedia LLC
Account Director Health Care
Sonora Behavioral Health
RN Restaurants and Clubs
Shogun Japanese Restaurant
Chef General
Award Service Inc
Route Sales

ROSWELL, N.M. — Karina Acosta's senior year at Roswell High came to an abrupt end after she was ticketed for blocking a fire lane outside a school and driving without a license.

The officer who stopped her — a Roswell policeman assigned to the school — asked her for proof of legal U.S. residency. Acosta, an illegal immigrant, had none. The officer telephoned immigration authorities, and Acosta, 18 and pregnant, was sent back to Mexico.

The episode has caused a furor in town, with teachers and others complaining that Acosta's treatment violated the spirit, if not the letter, of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that has all but made the nation's public schools havens for illegal immigrants.

"The school was considered a place you could come and not have to worry," said Coreta Justus, a teacher at 1,300-student Roswell High.

Complaining of racism and unfair treatment, students demonstrated on Main Street and drew adult counterprotesters. Irate parents confronted school officials. The police officer was taken off the school beat, and the program that put him on the high school campus was suspended.

Three months later, Acosta's case is still dividing people in Roswell, a town 200 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border that has built a tourism industry around a rumored UFO crash in 1947 that was supposedly covered up by the government. Roswell (pop. 45,000) is at least 44 percent Hispanic.

Officer Charlie Corn reported that he spotted Acosta blocking a fire lane in late November while she was dropping off a youngster at a middle school. Corn, who was on traffic duty at the school, followed Acosta to the high school nearby, discovered she had no license and ticketed her.

He gave her several days to produce proof of legal residency, after which he called her into his campus office and contacted immigration authorities. They immediately took her to a juvenile detention center, and she agreed to be sent back to the Mexican state of Chihuahua rather than fight deportation.

A 1982 Supreme Court ruling guarantees children who are in the United States illegally the right to a public education, and says schools cannot inquire about their immigration status. Federal authorities have a policy of not enforcing immigration laws on school grounds.

But the question of whether police may do so is murkier.

Marisol Perez of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said Corn's actions were "certainly questionable and problematic." She said the case was "just as egregious" as that of three students who were arrested at an Albuquerque high school in 2004 on immigration charges. The students sued the police, who later settled.

Jennifer Moore, who teaches international, human rights and refugee law at the University of New Mexico, said making students vulnerable to deportation at school is "making a mockery" of their right to public education.

And it is occurring "in the very place where they have the greatest chance at getting the skills they need to participate in this society that they are living in," she said.

Roswell's interim police chief, Scott Douglass, defended Corn, saying that the 10-year veteran was investigating a crime. But the chief said that in the future, "enforcement action like that would probably be taken after school hours and off of campus."

Assistant School Superintendent Mike Kakuska told parents immediately after the incident that the school system didn't support the officer's actions.

But others in Roswell resent the influx of Mexicans who are in the United States illegally. They complain the newcomers are using resources without paying enough in taxes.