Indopedia All Things Marijuana
There’s been a lot of news, protests and calls to Congress concerning the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program since Donald Trump announced last week that he would move to end the Obama-era protections for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children. And while Congress still has the opportunity to save the program, one Iowa teen has already been stripped of his DACA status, and entire life, because of one gram of weed.
According to a heart-wrenching report from Rekha Basu at the Des Moines Register, Luis Quintana Alvarez, an 18 year-old Iowan who was brought to America when he was 11 months old, was in a car with his cousin, an American born college student, when they were stopped for speeding. To shield his cousin from any scholastic consequences, Quintana professed ownership of the single gram of marijuana that happened to be in the car, figuring that the penalty would be minor and no damage would be done. He was dead wrong.
Not only was Quintana, a newly minted adult, arrested for possession and given a year of probation, but the case raised flags at the federal level, and the high school student is now slated for impending…
