Claudia Rueda, a California State University-Los Angeles (CSULA) student detained by Border Patrol last week, is also an activist with the Immigrant Youth Coalition (IYC) – a group whose fiscal sponsor has received funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and other global, deep-pocketed donors. Rueda, an unlawfully present immigrant, now faces deportation and L.A.’s progressive community is rallying on her behalf.
“One of our most active and powerful students was picked up by border patrol,” wrote Melina Abdullah, a professor at CSULA, who also leads the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter. “We must stand up for Claudia.”
After meeting with Rueda’s “organizing family” on the day of her capture, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors expressed her anger on Facebook, posting, “I’m furious!!!”
Rueda, a 22-year-old Latin America Studies major, has been part of the Immigrant Youth Coalition (IYC) since 2012 – the same year she was arrested for blocking traffic while chanting, “I’m undocumented and unafraid.” Since then, Rueda served as the Los Angeles IYC Youth Coordinator and has repeatedly expressed anti-police sentiments like other activists affiliated with Black Lives Matter.
The IYC is fiscally sponsored by the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON) – an open-borders activist group that has received at least $575,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2010. It also receives funding from Unbound Philanthropy, a lesser-known pillar of the institutional left, which has approved more than $580,000 in NDLON-bound grants since 2012. Recently, the Borealis Philanthropy authorized a Rapid Response Grant designated specifically for IYC organizing efforts – money allocated from its same fund that finances the Black Lives Matter movement.
As IYC’s website states:
The Immigrant Youth Coalition (IYC) is an undocumented and Queer/Trans youth led organization based in California. Our mission is to mobilize youth, families and incarcerated people to end the criminalization of immigrants and people of color. We organize to create social change that confronts the interlocking systems of oppression.
IYC’s objectives are similar to positions held by the Black Lives Matter movement, which describes itself as both “Queer” and “Transgender-Affirming.” BLM calls for “a complete dismantling of the prison industrial complex,” and cites black immigrants “living in the shadows” as an example of how “Black lives are deprived” of “basic human rights and dignity.”
Coincidentally, IYC’s financial sponsor has been supportive of Black Lives Matter as early as the Ferguson, Missouri riots in 2014 – when NDLON called on Latinos and immigrants to participate in the uprising:
“…we urge those within the immigrant rights movement to attend the rallies and protests in the coming days. Black lives matter and any movement against dehumanization must affirm and defend that truth. Mike Brown is not the first but the latest in an epidemic of violence. We say, not one more Black person murdered by police, not one more struggle fought alone, not one more life criminalized as we continue our struggle for not one more deportation.”
Since Ferguson, the NDLON has continued to intertwine its mission with Black Lives Matter’s. As a 2015 press release, written by a former Soros Justice Fellow, reads:
“We understand that the basis of anti-immigrant sentiment is rooted in anti-Black racism and commit to the liberation of Black people as central to the liberation of all immigrants and communities of color. We support the Black Lives Matter movement.”
The NDLON sponsored an immigration town hall inside Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in 2014, where the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) spoke about policy changes designed to benefit unlawfully present residents.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck explained that the City’s impound policy had been revised to be “more generous to people without licenses.” He reaffirmed that the department “supported drivers’ licenses for the undocumented.” He reassured attendees that LAPD “stopped honoring ICE detention requests in every instance,” then spoke of his “obligation” to enable anyone, lawfully present or not, “to live a life that is full and happy.”
According to a report published by the Capital Research Center, an investigative think-tank that examines activist nonprofits:
The National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON) has an unusual strategy for helping illegal immigrants achieve legal status. It tries to make every aspect of their work lives legal except their immigration status. Foundation grants assist NDLON efforts. NDLON reasons that if illegal immigrants are increasingly open and unremarkable in their day-to-day activities, then American citizens are more likely to approve efforts by lawmakers to give them amnesty.
That recalcitrant philosophy might explain why Rueda never applied for protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program – which might have prevented her current situation – despite stating her intentions to do so in 2012.
“I do plan to apply for deferred action and getting arrested does affect my chances of receiving it, because the arrest prohibits me from filing an application,” Rueda told Eastern Group Publications more than four years ago. “Instead I have to call a number and talk to the people in charge about my case.”
“This is a risk I took for my community,” Rueda continued.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued the following statement:
Department of Homeland Security databases indicate Ms. Rueda currently has no legal authorization to be in the United States. Accordingly, she has been placed in removal proceedings before the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). It will now be up to an immigration judge with EOIR to determine whether Ms. Rueda has a legal basis to remain in the U.S. or will be ordered removed.
Now, Claudia Rueda’s fate will be determined by the same system she has so brazenly worked to destroy.
According to a statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Rueda’s arrest for immigration violations was “the result of targeted enforcement actions that were initiated from a criminal investigation” of “a cross-border narcotics smuggling organization” involving her father.
A video below of Immigrant Youth Coalition activists blocking traffic and protesting at demonstrations in Southern California: