Marroquín, who is seeking political asylum here, served a ninety-day sentence for "attempting to illegally enter the country."

The government’s $10,000 ransom demand forced Marroquín to spend nearly a week more behind bars while the U.S. Committee for Justice to Latin American Political Prisoners (USLA) worked to raise the money.

Marroquín fled Mexico and came to the United States in April 1974 after he was falsely accused of a murder in Monterrey. He believed his life was in danger because he had been a political activist at the university there. The Mexican government is notorious for its violation of the human rights of political dissidents--so notorious it has drawn criticism even from the U.S. State Department.

One of the students who was accused with Marroquín of the Monterrey murder was arrested in April, 1975. No one has heard from him since.

Marroquín was arrested at the border last September as he returned from a visit to Mexico to see an attorney. At the time of his arrest, the U.S. government threatened to "exclude" him--that is, merely ship him back to Mexico after only the most perfunctory hearing.

An emergency campaign by USLA slowed the government’s drive, and won hundreds of endorsers Marroquín’s right to political asylum.

"The support I have gotten convinces me that we can win my case," Marroquín said. "It also shows we can build a powerful movement in this country against la migra and against the discriminatory U.S. policy on granting asylum."

Meanwhile, the INS has begun its attempt to deport Marroquín. A deportation hearing is scheduled for January 17.  
 
December 29, 1952
The militancy of the Negro people of the South in their struggle against Jim Crow was graphically described to the Flint branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People by...Mrs. Juanita Craft of Texas...a woman in her sixties, a key organizer of the 182 NAACP branches in her state and a member of the NAACP National Board.

Referring to the tendency to complacency of some Negroes in the North, who, because of the relatively better economic and social conditions above the Mason-Dixon line, wash their hands of the South or write it off as hopeless, Mrs. Craft said: "Let me warn you that when McCarthyism gets a hold in this land some of you will wish you could get back down South where we have fighting NAACP branches."

This dedicated crusader for human rights described the militancy of the NAACP members in the South, "where it isn’t so easy or safe to be a member," and related with pride how Negroes had become stewards and committeemen in the Texas CIO [Congress of Industrial Organizations union].

The audience listened intently as she enumerated the daily heroic acts of individual Southern Negroes--refusal to transfer to Jim Crow sections on trains, enrollment in colleges and schools, remaining in the front sections of buses. With enthusiasm she described the glorious day when she ate with the six Negro students in the cafeteria of the University of Dallas. As a little girl she had been warned constantly that no Negro must even step on the lawn of that lily-white institution.  
 
 
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