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Chamber pressure Breakup over contract violations means end to ‘social club’
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BY ELIAS WEISS
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Protesters gather near the ICE Field office in Central Phoenix. Feb. 3.
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felt the impact immigration policy had on her family. Her father was ripped away from her family, returned to Mexico for crossing the border illegally. “We opened the door. We wanted to do the right thing,” she said, remembering the day ICE officers came to take her family to a detention facility for illegally entering the country. “I ran to the backyard, and I was crying and screaming because I was confused. “I feel like a little part of me was going away, and I didn’t know what was going to happen to my dad,” she remembered, as her eyes welled up. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to him. That stayed with me. “The whole experience was so traumatic for me.” Trump sent MAGA mouthpiece to Maricopa Monica Crowley, the recently appointed assistant Secretary of State, stumped for the Trump campaign in September at the Maricopa
Library & Cultural Center. In describing what to expect from the new administration, she invoked a familiar story. In 2000, Cuban-born Elián Gonzáles, 6, was forcefully removed from a Florida home after entering the U.S. illegally. As seen in a Pulitzer- winning photograph, Gonzales was pulled from a closet by immigration officers pointing MP5s at the crying child. It was a moment seared into the American psyche, one that stayed with Monica Crowley 24 years later, she said. “There were all these photographs, the kid is screaming, crying as he’s removed,” Crowley told an audience of Maricopa voters and journalists. The news media “is going to make President Trump’s life every day a living hell with these images of people being forcibly removed from places in New York and Arizona and your community here,” she told the Maricopa audience, mostly in Trump campaign gear. “They’re going to try to put so much pressure on him to stop these mass deportations.” The crowd nodded in approval.
of our students,” wrote Superintendent Tracey Lopeman in the Jan. 28 memo. “School staff will not inquire or collect information or records about a student’s immigration status or that of their family members.” Immigration status does not affect a student’s right to enroll in school. As established by the Supreme Court in the landmark 1982 case Plyler v. Doe, all children — regardless of immigration status — have the right to a free public education. Barring students from public education based on their immigration status would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, the justices had concluded. Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, law enforcement officers must show “proper legal documentation” — a.k.a. a warrant — to access student records. Spalacios has spent four-fifths of her life in school. She intimately understands such anxieties. When Spalacios was a child, she said she
Home of the 4x HS State Champion Track & Cross Country star, Noah Charves
InMaricopa.com | March 2025
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