Mora overcomes detainment, doubt

Three times Luis Mora came to Southwestern College with the hope of enrolling as an undocumented student. Each time he was sent home for not having a Social Security number.

Mora attempted to enroll one last time the day before he was scheduled to get on a plane and leave the country. This time he got in thanks to Assembly Bill 540 and a caring faculty member. AB 540 allows nonresidents to only be charged in-state tuition as long as they meet certain conditions.

“I’m grateful for the opportunities SWC was able to give me,” Mora said. “I always get emotional when I talk about when I first came to SWC mostly because I came with no hope.”

Mora returned Sept. 13 to the place he said he once felt unwanted to spread hope to SWC students. In a speech honoring Latinx Heritage Month, Mora spoke about how his mother emigrated to Ecuador from Columbia due to the war on drugs. Mora immigrated to the U.S. in 2011. He did not become undocumented until his junior year at Otay Ranch High School when his visa expired.

“When I met with my counselors, all of them told me ‘you’re not going to college, you’re not going to go to university. You’re better off going into the working field,’” Mora said.

Mora, who ended up transferring to University of California, Berkeley, did not truly learn to accept himself until he was detained last winter after a birthday party. He and his girlfriend, Jaleen Udarbe, missed a turn on Highway 94 driving home and went through an immigration checkpoint by mistake. He complied and admitted that he was not a citizen, but explained that he was a student at UC Berkeley. He was held at the Otay Mesa Detention Facility for two-and-a-half weeks.

Mora told his girlfriend about his status only a month before the incident. Nobody knew Mora was an undocumented student aside from her.

“I was personally embarrassed and ashamed to be who I was when I realized the realities,” Mora said. “I didn’t want anyone to know. It was something I never wanted anyone to know. I was just hoping to receive the highest education I can. No one would find out, judge, or criticize me. That was perhaps one of the biggest mistakes I made.”

Although the process was not easy, Mora said the detention center allowed him to accept himself

“First day of prison I thought all my friends were going to hate me and leave me,” said Mora. “I thought my partner was going to be disappointed in me. It was a sense of anxiety and uncertainty of what was going to happen to all the people I made connections with.”

He was depressed and had suicidal thoughts, but Mora realized he was wrong in assuming people would not support him. People pushed him down all his life, he said, but he did have people who uplifted him.

Mora learned from this experience and uses the publicity to advocate for undocumented students.

“If Luis Mora wasn’t going to UC Berkeley and wasn’t known for his participation in organizations, what happened might not have transpired,” said Improving Dreams, Equity, Access &Success (IDEAS) Club President Miguel Mellado. “It would have been another undocumented student in jail and nobody would have ever known.”

Mora was very involved with IDEAS while at SWC, he said. He became the club president and helped organize events to raise awareness on what it means to be undocumented.

“He was always a person who engaged in his academics,” IDEAS Club advisor Javier Madrigal said. “He was very humble and down to earth. As president of IDEAS he was always looking for resources to help his community.”

SWC faculty inspired and encouraged Mora to continue his education, he said. He could not say the same about some of the counselors. When Mora expressed that he wanted to transfer to UC Berkeley some would ask him how he was going to achieve that. They implied that even if he got accepted he would not be able to afford tuition.

Mora said not to worry, he would figure it out.

And he did.

Mora said he still receives similar questions to this day. During the Q and A portion of his Sept. 13 speech, he was asked how he can make a living being undocumented.

“The issue is not just about taking action and going to the capital and showing them what the reality is,” said Mora. “But more so it’s about communicating to the community what undocumented really is. Even my own girlfriend, the person I love the most, thought I was a criminal. She thought that all of us who were undocumented were criminals. That’s not because she’s racist or ignorant, but because society puts that mentality (in us) and they’re stereotyping. She’s not the only one.”

Mora is graduating from UC Berkeley in 2019 and said he wants to attend law school at Harvard or Yale. He said he would not be at this point in his academic career if he listened to people telling him to quit and listened to stereotypes about undocumented students.