8 Of ‘Dream 34’ Protesters Released After Being Detained At Mexican Border

Eight of the "Dream 34" young undocumented migrants who marched to the Laredo port of entry at the US-Mexico border to ask to be allowed into the United States without legal documents were released on Tuesday from an undisclosed detention center, according to the Associated Press. Seven of the eight walked out of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at noon yesterday after they were granted parole from deportation for one year. They'll appear before a US immigration judge in a review of their asylum requests in coming months.

The last of the eight to be paroled, according to what immigration attorney David Bennion told the AP, was a Honduran woman, Elsy Núñez, who joined the ranks of what in the days leading up to the protest had previously been the "Dream 30." She had been staying at a migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo, on the Mexican side of the border, and had been trying to enter the United States to seek medical treatment for her 4-year-old daughter Valeria, a US citizen who suffers from cerebral palsy.

"It's a demonstration that the government can do what we're asking," Bennion told the AP, adding that he hoped immigration officials would make a similar decision on the cases of the other 26. The number of protestors had swelled as the day of the protest -- organized by the National Immigrant Youth Alliance -- neared, much like the last time a protest was planned at the border. In that case, a group of nine young undocumented immigrants dubbed the "Dream 9" donned similar attire -- graduation gowns and gaps - and marched to an Arizona port of entry, where after spending two weeks in detention, they were granted parole as they waited for their asylum cases to be granted an audience with an immigration judge.

Many of the members of both groups would have qualified for the Obama administration program Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which grants work authorization and a renewable two-year reprieve from deportation measures to many undocumented young people brought to the US as children. But many of the protestors had left for Mexico -- the country where they were born and in some cases spent their first few years of life -- not long before that executive order was issued, either because they were deported or voluntarily. Brandow Gonzalez, who left his home in Columbus, Ohio, when his parents were deported four years ago, told Colorlines he had been "prepared to be in detention for a long time, and I was prepared to suffer there," adding, "I'm surprised, but so happy and so grateful."

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