A Mexican farmworker who became a leading advocate for undocumented migrant workers in Vermont has been granted a year-long stay from deportation.
Danilo Lopez won support from Vermont politicians who urged federal officials to let him remain in the country.
Two years ago, Lopez became the face of Vermont farmworkers who often live in the shadows when a car he was riding in two years ago was pulled over for speeding by state police.
Lopez, who is now 23, was turned over to federal immigration authorities. The traffic stop – and the state’s role in his potential deportation – eventually led to a change in state police policy.
But Lopez also faced a deportation order to leave the country by July 5. State politicians – including Gov. Peter Shumlin and the Congressional delegation – rallied to his cause.
Speaker through an interpreter, Brendan O’Neill of the group Migrant Justice, Lopez said he was grateful for all the help, but especially to his fellow farmworkers.
“I would not have felt so much support if it had not been for my companeros, my community, my farmworker friends, who stood with me and said, ‘Don’t worry, Danilo, you fought for us, we will fight for you for this. We can do it,’” he said. “And that is what gave me the support to do this, and then we were able to go out and get all the other support.”
The traffic stop two years ago transformed Lopez into an activist for the more than 1,000 undocumented migrants who work on Vermont’s dairy farms.
Along with the Burlington-based group Migrant Justice, Lopez successfully lobbied the Legislature to pass a law allowing undocumented workers to apply for state driving privileges
Lopez says he wants to speak out now for those who face deportation every day.
“So unfortunately we don’t count with all the resources or capacity it takes to stop a thousand or more deportations a day. But if we can show that we can stop one deportation, we can show we can stop more. And that’s the work we need to do,” he said.
In early July, the federal Immigration and Customs and Enforcement agency said Lopez would be a good candidate to apply for a “stay of removal” – which would stop his deportation. Lopez applied last week. He learned Monday he can stay until July of 2014.
Lopez said one of the issues he wants to work on in the coming year is to make sure all police agencies in Vermont adopt a bias-free policing policy that’s now being used by the Vermont state police.
Under the policy, state police officers are not supposed to arrest people whose only suspected violation may be that they are in the country without proper documentation.
