DACA recipient arrested near Yuma on human-smuggling charges

Border Patrol agents stationed at the Yuma Sector arrested a 26-year-old Mexican immigrant — shielded from deportation under a deferred-action program known as DACA — on charges of human smuggling.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the arrest took place Monday afternoon after agents witnessed four suspected undocumented immigrants getting into the 26-year-old's truck and driving away.

Agents who track signs of crossers spotted footprints of four people near the Colorado River — which delineates a portion of the border between the two countries — in a rural area south of Yuma.

Other agents followed the group to the truck and arrested them as they drove.

Fingerprint checks let agents determine "how and if they have documents to be in and remain in the United States," said Justin Kallinger, the operations officer for Border Patrol's Yuma Sector. "That's how we found out that this person had the documentation as a DACA recipient."

The program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, began in 2012 under then-President Barack Obama. It shielded from deportation nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. However, President Donald Trump announced last year the program would end in March, calling on Congress to find a permanent solution for the immigrants known as "dreamers."

The Border Patrol has not identified the Mexican immigrant, but said he's from Salinas, California. Kallinger said this is the first case in recent memory of a DACA recipient arrested in the Yuma Sector for human smuggling.

He refused to say whether any of the four people he was allegedly transporting were related to him, saying it's part of the ongoing investigation.

To be eligible for DACA, recipients must pass criminal-background checks, making any applicant with a criminal history ineligible. Kallinger said the 26-year-old had been charged, but not convicted. He remains in federal custody. The other four people were also charged with immigration violations, Kallinger said.

The arrest took place a day before Trump delivered his first State of the Union address, where he advocated for a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients in exchange for building a border wall and other immigration reforms.

However, during his speech, he continued to depict some immigrants as gang criminals and threats to national security. In contrast, a number of Democratic lawmakers, including several in Arizona's congressional delegation, invited DACA recipients as their guests to underscore their push for a bill to legalize their status.

Their presence at the event rankled some Republicans, notably immigration hard-liner U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who had asked U.S. Capitol Police to check the immigration status of guests and "deport any illegal aliens attempting to go through security, under any pretext of invitation or otherwise."

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