Issue 73 - Stanford Lawyer - Stanford University

BRIEFS
7
STANFORD
LAWYER
RAY YBARRA ’05: TAKING ON THE MINUTEMEN
Last spring, while his Stanford Law School classmates
prepared for graduation, Ray Ybarra found himself on
a windswept bluff at the U.S.-Mexican border, watching
retired men and women with handguns and binoculars
scan the desert for illegal immigrants. A group of
vigilantes, called the Minuteman Project, had descend ed on
southern Arizona to try to stop illegal Mexican migration.
Ybarra ’05, who is on a two-year leave from the law school,
was there to make sure they did not violate the rights of
migrants. The desert that divides Mexico and the United
States claims the lives of hundreds of immigrants every year.
He didn’t want gun-toting activists to add to the toll.
“Last year one girl died right by this road,” Ybarra said
in April, referring to a victim of dehydration. He was looking
down on a stretch of
dust that serves as an international
boundary near the
border town of Douglas,
Arizona. The Minuteman
Project had set up encampments
every 50 yards or
so, dressing their trucks
in American flags and laying
out lawn chairs. Ybarra
stood a stone’s throw away
with a half dozen of his own
volunteers, including two
Stanford Law School students,
Matthew Liebman ’06
and Jason Tarricone ’06.
Ybarra is intimately
familiar with the border area and the plight of the migrants.
His father hailed from Douglas. His mother was born a few
hundred yards to the south, in the Mexican town of Agua
Prieta. “We’d literally play on the border,” Ybarra said. “My
brother and I had this game of running as far into Mexico as
we could and then running back.”
At the age of 26, Ybarra’s efforts have catapulted him
into a leading role as an advocate for migrant rights. “He
really is quite a star to not only have thought of this project
but to go to the border and make it happen,” said Jayashri
Srikantiah, associate professor of law (teaching) and director
of Stanford Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. “The
border is the location of a major civil rights struggle for
immigrants right now.”
Minuteman organizer Chris Simcox has a somewhat
less generous view of Ybarra’s work. “I tolerate Ray,” said
Simcox. “As a father, I am always impressed with youthful
idealism.” That idealism is what brought Ybarra to Stanford
(Left to right) Ray Ybarra ’05, Matthew Liebman ’06, and Jason Tarricone ’06
stand watch in the desert near Douglas, Arizona, monitoring the activities
of the Minuteman Project, a group of citizen soldiers committed to stopping
illegal Mexican migration into the United States.
Law School in the first place. After his first year at Stanford,
Ybarra spent the summer working in Arizona for the ACLU
to raise awareness of vigilante activity against migrants. Less
than a year later, he was awarded the ACLU’s Ira Glasser
Racial Justice Fellowship, which has allowed him to take a
two-year leave of absence to work on the border.
With a small salary, Ybarra moved to his grandfather’s
house in Douglas, where he set up an office in the laundry
room. Within months he had helped file a federal civil lawsuit
against one rancher, Roger Barnett, who had allegedly
held a group of 16 migrants at gunpoint. He distributed
open letters to the local sheriff’s office, explaining the rights
of migrants and the legal limits of citizen patrols. On behalf
of the ACLU, he traveled the country lecturing legal groups
on the hazards of the current
border policy, and
recently completed a video
documentary of the role racism
plays in border disputes.
None of it was easy—he
temporarily resigned from
the ACLU after a dispute
over tactics—but he has
been unwavering in his
committment. “Ray is kind
of a force of nature,” said
PHOTO: PETER HOLDERNESS
Michele Landis Dauber,
associate professor of law
and Bernard D. Bergreen
Faculty Scholar, who had
him as a first-year law student
at Stanford and later visited him on the border. “I think
he has the potential to become as important a civil rights
leader in the Latino community as Cesar Chavez.”
Simcox and other advocates of closing the border are
now planning armed border patrols in Texas, New Mexico,
and California, including a new patrol in California in which
volunteers will carry long arms. Ybarra is hoping to help get
legal observation posts set up in time. He moved in July to
El Paso, Texas, to set up a legal monitoring program there.
Ybarra plans to return to Stanford in the fall of 2006 to
complete his final year of law school, before he returns to
the border to continue what he considers his life’s work. He
will no doubt find many supporters on campus. “He is an
amazing role model in the way that he lives by what he
believes,” said Olivia Para ’07, who volunteered during the
Minuteman protest. “I think ultimately what Ray is trying to
do is to let people know what is happening.”
— Michael Scherer