Friends Launch Social Media Campaign for Detained Northwest Grad

When the news got out that a friend was being detained on possible immigration violations, Montgomery County youths took to the tweets.

The friends of Jorge Steven Acuña, 19, of Germantown, launched a social media campaign with hopes of saving him from deportation. Acuña and his parents, Blanca and Jorge Acuña, were taken to Worcester Detention Center last week, Patch was told by people close to the family.

The youths have collected more than 4,000 signatures through an online petition at change.org, soliciting support through #JSA-tagged tweets and an expanding list of Facebook fans—about 1,500 at last count on Monday.

The Acuña family story caught the attention of the Montgomery County Council, which issued a collective statement late Monday calling on the Department of Homeland Security and The White House to intervene.

Acuña, a 2011 graduate of , was brought over to the United States from Colombia when he was a child. But it is unclear whether Acuña and his parents were residing in the United States legally.

A spokeswoman for the immigrant advocacy group Casa de Maryland said legal manager Enid Gonzales was representing the Acuñas. Gonzales did not immediately return calls from Patch. The political blog Maryland Juice claims that a friend of Acuña said he was "picked up with his parents by ICE to be deported after their multi-year application for asylum was denied."

Julio Castillio, the one who started the online petition, said he found out what happened to his friend from a family member on March 7. He and Acuña played soccer for the Jaguars. According to Castillio, Acuña worked internships to cover the cost of tuition at Montgomery College.

“This shouldn’t have happened to him,” Castillio told Patch. “We all knew he had aspirations—he wanted to become a surgeon. We all felt so bad.”

Fellow Northwest graduate Melissa Curtis, 19, of Germantown, was among the group of friends to launch the social media campaign. She said it was the their way of turning sadness into action. "We just can't wait for him to go away," Curtis told Patch.

Castillio and Curtis said friends, Montgomery College students and representatives from Maryland Dream Youth Committee are organizing a rally at Rockville Town Square on Wednesday, followed by a candlelight vigil at Montgomery College’s Rockville campus.

In addition to catching the attention of Casa and the Montgomery County Council, the online campaign has trickled down to downcounty high schools, gaining support from people like Karen Zanegas, a high school senior who has never met Acuña.

Zanegas, 18, who , has been handing out fliers and promoting Wednesday's events to bloggers and news media. 

“It was the right thing to do,” Zanegas said.