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Issue 73 - Stanford Lawyer - Stanford University

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BRIEFS<br />

7<br />

STANFORD<br />

LAWYER<br />

RAY YBARRA ’05: TAKING ON THE MINUTEMEN<br />

Last spring, while his <strong>Stanford</strong> Law School classmates<br />

prepared for graduation, Ray Ybarra found himself on<br />

a windswept bluff at the U.S.-Mexican border, watching<br />

retired men and women with handguns and binoculars<br />

scan the desert for illegal immigrants. A group of<br />

vigilantes, called the Minuteman Project, had descend ed on<br />

southern Arizona to try to stop illegal Mexican migration.<br />

Ybarra ’05, who is on a two-year leave from the law school,<br />

was there to make sure they did not violate the rights of<br />

migrants. The desert that divides Mexico and the United<br />

States claims the lives of hundreds of immigrants every year.<br />

He didn’t want gun-toting activists to add to the toll.<br />

“Last year one girl died right by this road,” Ybarra said<br />

in April, referring to a victim of dehydration. He was looking<br />

down on a stretch of<br />

dust that serves as an international<br />

boundary near the<br />

border town of Douglas,<br />

Arizona. The Minuteman<br />

Project had set up encampments<br />

every 50 yards or<br />

so, dressing their trucks<br />

in American flags and laying<br />

out lawn chairs. Ybarra<br />

stood a stone’s throw away<br />

with a half dozen of his own<br />

volunteers, including two<br />

<strong>Stanford</strong> Law School students,<br />

Matthew Liebman ’06<br />

and Jason Tarricone ’06.<br />

Ybarra is intimately<br />

familiar with the border area and the plight of the migrants.<br />

His father hailed from Douglas. His mother was born a few<br />

hundred yards to the south, in the Mexican town of Agua<br />

Prieta. “We’d literally play on the border,” Ybarra said. “My<br />

brother and I had this game of running as far into Mexico as<br />

we could and then running back.”<br />

At the age of 26, Ybarra’s efforts have catapulted him<br />

into a leading role as an advocate for migrant rights. “He<br />

really is quite a star to not only have thought of this project<br />

but to go to the border and make it happen,” said Jayashri<br />

Srikantiah, associate professor of law (teaching) and director<br />

of <strong>Stanford</strong> Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. “The<br />

border is the location of a major civil rights struggle for<br />

immigrants right now.”<br />

Minuteman organizer Chris Simcox has a somewhat<br />

less generous view of Ybarra’s work. “I tolerate Ray,” said<br />

Simcox. “As a father, I am always impressed with youthful<br />

idealism.” That idealism is what brought Ybarra to <strong>Stanford</strong><br />

(Left to right) Ray Ybarra ’05, Matthew Liebman ’06, and Jason Tarricone ’06<br />

stand watch in the desert near Douglas, Arizona, monitoring the activities<br />

of the Minuteman Project, a group of citizen soldiers committed to stopping<br />

illegal Mexican migration into the United States.<br />

Law School in the first place. After his first year at <strong>Stanford</strong>,<br />

Ybarra spent the summer working in Arizona for the ACLU<br />

to raise awareness of vigilante activity against migrants. Less<br />

than a year later, he was awarded the ACLU’s Ira Glasser<br />

Racial Justice Fellowship, which has allowed him to take a<br />

two-year leave of absence to work on the border.<br />

With a small salary, Ybarra moved to his grandfather’s<br />

house in Douglas, where he set up an office in the laundry<br />

room. Within months he had helped file a federal civil lawsuit<br />

against one rancher, Roger Barnett, who had allegedly<br />

held a group of 16 migrants at gunpoint. He distributed<br />

open letters to the local sheriff’s office, explaining the rights<br />

of migrants and the legal limits of citizen patrols. On behalf<br />

of the ACLU, he traveled the country lecturing legal groups<br />

on the hazards of the current<br />

border policy, and<br />

recently completed a video<br />

documentary of the role racism<br />

plays in border disputes.<br />

None of it was easy—he<br />

temporarily resigned from<br />

the ACLU after a dispute<br />

over tactics—but he has<br />

been unwavering in his<br />

committment. “Ray is kind<br />

of a force of nature,” said<br />

PHOTO: PETER HOLDERNESS<br />

Michele Landis Dauber,<br />

associate professor of law<br />

and Bernard D. Bergreen<br />

Faculty Scholar, who had<br />

him as a first-year law student<br />

at <strong>Stanford</strong> and later visited him on the border. “I think<br />

he has the potential to become as important a civil rights<br />

leader in the Latino community as Cesar Chavez.”<br />

Simcox and other advocates of closing the border are<br />

now planning armed border patrols in Texas, New Mexico,<br />

and California, including a new patrol in California in which<br />

volunteers will carry long arms. Ybarra is hoping to help get<br />

legal observation posts set up in time. He moved in July to<br />

El Paso, Texas, to set up a legal monitoring program there.<br />

Ybarra plans to return to <strong>Stanford</strong> in the fall of 2006 to<br />

complete his final year of law school, before he returns to<br />

the border to continue what he considers his life’s work. He<br />

will no doubt find many supporters on campus. “He is an<br />

amazing role model in the way that he lives by what he<br />

believes,” said Olivia Para ’07, who volunteered during the<br />

Minuteman protest. “I think ultimately what Ray is trying to<br />

do is to let people know what is happening.”<br />

— Michael Scherer

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