On Friday, April 19 motions to dismiss the charges against three students who protested the presence of Border Patrol on the University of Arizona campus last month were granted by two Pima County Consolidated Court judges.
On March 19, Border Patrol agents were on campus in the Modern Languages building as guests of an event hosted by the Criminal Justice Association, a university club. There was no previous school-wide announcement that BP agents would be present on campus that day.
Student activists protested and confronted the BP agents’ unexpected presence. A video that captured the exchange was posted online and went viral. As a result, the students involved in the protest received an overwhelming amount of personal threats online.
Afterwards, three female students were charged by the University of Arizona Police Department with Class 1 misdemeanors and released, awaiting a court date that was set for today, April 22.
Denisse Moreno Melchor, Marianna Coles-Curtis and Mariel Bustamante faced charges of interference with peaceful conduct of an educational institution. Moreno Melchor was given an additional charge of threats and intimidation.
UA President Robert Robbins publicly supported the UAPD’s decision to charge the students, which was met with hundreds of protestors attending a recent Arizona Board of Regents meeting on campus. They voiced their support for the three students, who came to be known nationally as the “Arizona 3” and pressured UA administration to call for the charges to be dropped. The series of events has become an example for the national debate over free speech on campus.
The three students’ court records now say that their charges are “not recommended for prosecution,” and their court appearances were canceled. The UA told the Arizona Republic that they respect the court’s decision and are reviewing the March 19 incident according to the Dean of Students’ review process.
This article appears in Apr 18-24, 2019.
once again pima county fails miserably to enforce the law….disrespectful and disgraceful decision
What do you expect? It’s a stinking liberal cesspool of ignorance.
Free Speech is allowing people to speak, it’s not your right to Not let them speak, Rude, vicious, ignorant people! Ask the asylum seekers, migrants or illegal aliens or whatever you want to call the masses that are coming here. “What do you think of the US Border Patrol?”
I bet most of them will say that the BP helped them, and were good decent people doing their Job. They are not the villains that these
U of A students claim they are. Go out in the world and get a job.
Then you won’t have time for your ignorant protest.
Reading this comment thread makes me, once again, pretty disgusted by the community, or perhaps the country, that I live in. Since when is speech free for the haters, but no one else? Since when can an idiot so-called religious man stand on the mall with his hate speech, screeching out obscenities and vicious comments, and students cannot protest? Get a grip, haters. Rights are for all of us, not just you. The Arizona 3 have been exonerated, but the background issue of whether it is appropriate for Border Patrol to be on the campus armed and dangerous has been left aside. I stand with the student protesters on this one.
And I should add that I hope you haters have never taken advantage of an 8 hour work day or a 40 hour week, or any of the other things we take for granted that were actually fought for through non violent protest. “ignorant protest” indeed!
Betts makes the typical liberal assumption that all BP Agents are “armed and dangerous.”
I know BP agents and they save lives. Stop with your misguided hatred. And by the way, all the best countries in the world have borders, culture and language. You don’t have the right to eliminate ours.
It might help stifle the ignorance if some of you knew what was going on at our border.
https://kvoa.com/news/2019/04/23/woman-child-apprehended-at-border-after-dropped-off-by-heavily-armed-men/
Than you Border Patrol!
Free speech for the Border Patrol, but not for university students. Got it. Nazis gonna nazi.
Don’t be blinded by your stupidity. This country won’t be around much longer if the name calling, overzealous UA college students
get in power. Everything that was the history and making of the USA
will be deemed racist and vilified and deleted.