Student's deportation roils New Mexico town
ROSWELL, N.M.: "This conservative city on the barren eastern plains of New Mexico long had been spared the acrimonious debates over illegal immigration that have racked so much of the Southwest.
That is, until December, when immigration enforcement entered the murky terrain of the local high school.
A school security officer stopped Karina Acosta, an 18-year-old pregnant Roswell High School senior, and discovered she was in the country illegally. He called federal immigration authorities, who swiftly deported her.
The district superintendent protested and the officer was removed from the school and transferred back to the city Police Department. About three dozen angry students and parents marched on police headquarters -- a notable event in a town not accustomed to controversy -- and were met by a handful of counterdemonstrators who backed the officer."
NICHOLAS RICCARDI in the Los Angeles Times.