A few months ago, Jose Bello's future looked grim: detention, imprisonment, deportation and a long-term separation from his infant son. Then two NFL players stepped in.
A few months ago, Jose Bello’s future looked grim: detention, imprisonment, deportation and a long-term separation from his infant son.At a meeting in May of the Kern County board of supervisors in Bakersfield, the 22-year-old Mexico native, farmworker and outspoken college activist had pushed up to the podium, leaned into the mic and recited the verses that would set off an uproar.
His case quickly drew the support of immigrant-rights advocates, who assert that Bello is a victim of overreaching federal agents, emboldened by the Trump administration’s policies, who trampled on his 1st Amendment rights.Bello had experienced a run-in with ICE a year earlier, in May 2018, that landed him in a detention center for several months until friends and family came up with his $10,000 bond. But this time his bail was set at $50,000.
On July 16, a U.S. District Court in San Francisco rejected the ACLU’s lawsuit, and in a previous phone interview from the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Facility in Bakersfield, where he was being held, Bello was despondent. He’d seen grown men weep because they couldn’t provide for their families while locked in detention.
Norman’s representative said the football player had been active on behalf of immigrant rights for the last year. He has made donations to a detention center run by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and pushed for education reform across the county.“We moved the needle,” he said, “but there is much more to be done in that space.”
Members of a Washington, D.C.-based group that favors restrictions on immigration, however, say that Bello’s public outcry isn’t the reason that he was placed in detention. About two years ago, he enrolled in Bakersfield College, where he majors in political science and participates in several campus organizations, including Youth Empowering Success, a group that advocates for foster youth and previously incarcerated students.
“He was really confused about it,” Barajas said. “This thing that he felt should be so minuscule has such a big detriment on his life.” “A lot of folks are too afraid to publicly be out there because of their undocumented status, but he made sure to go out there because he knew that staying quiet wasn’t going to do anything,” said Tania Bernal, 27, who recently graduated from Bakersfield College.
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