While DACA recipient and TikTok star Karla Toledo was stuck in an ICE detention facility, she had no idea how much attention her case was receiving.
“Security guards were like, ‘Hey, I’ve seen you on TikTok’ and I was like ‘Oh, that’s weird,’” she said.
Whether you heard about it on TikTok, from social media posts by Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, an activist text chain, or read about it in the local news, all of Tucson — and thousands of people across the country — turned their attention to Toledo’s case when ICE agents came to her house and took her into custody the morning of May 18.
Toledo is one of 18,000 DACA recipients in Arizona, but she’s one of the few that has a massive TikTok following.
And it is massive. She has nearly 700,000 followers who watch her cleaning her house, riding bikes with her friends or just talking about what's on her mind.
@karlangas.toledo Yo solita me caigo bien jiji
Toledo started cleaning the house but ended up hosting a full concert in her living room
featuring the greatest hits by Jenni Rivera.
Toledo came to the United States from Mexico when she was only a year old and has lived in Tucson ever since. She works with student recruitment at Academy On-Demand.
She also spent the past five years building a large following on TikTok, where she connected with people across the country and has become a well known voice in her community.
Her case grabbed national attention not only because the country is on edge about the Trump administration’s mass deportation program, but also because federal officials are starting to go after DACA recipients, who have a semi-legal status thanks to an Obama-era program.
Federal immigration officials are delaying renewals for DACA recipients, in some cases turning a process that should take a few weeks into a months-long ordeal, which puts them at risk of being deported if their status lapses. More than 260 DACA recipients were deported in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, per information released by Congress.
In Toledo’s case, news of her detention quickly spread online. Thousands of people shared her story on social media, while community leaders, advocates, and news organizations brought same-day attention to her case.
Grijalva successfully lobbied to see Toledo on the day of her arrest.
It worked. Last Wednesday, the charges against Toledo were dismissed and the Department of Homeland Security dropped the case. However, the case could be brought back.
When we caught up with her after her case was dismissed, she was very appreciative of all the work that was done by her friends and the rest of the Tucson community while she was detained, including contacting immigration attorney Mo Goldman (immigration proceedings are civil, not criminal, so the court doesn’t provide you with an attorney).
“You know, everybody else did the work. I was detained,” Toledo told us, explaining that Goldman works with Scholarships A-Z, which advocates for DACA recipients.
The same allies outside of the detention center continued to share her story, contact advocates, organize support, and brought national attention to her case. While she was locked up, she had no idea any of that was happening.
“I was like, ‘What do you mean (I’m on) the news?’” she said.
Given how her case played out, should people with large social media followings feel a responsibility to speak out?
“Absolutely. I think if you have everybody, not just people with followings, but anybody can be an influence to guide people and to help people,” she told us. “If you know information, it doesn't matter what kind of platform you have to distribute it because it can help. Resources are precious.”
Looking ahead
Since her release, some of the people she met inside the detention center are reaching out to her, which doesn’t surprise her.
“I gave my phone number to most of the people that were there,” she said.
She also highlighted that some of the people she met in detention have to come up with $50,000 bonds if they want to get out, “and that makes it impossible for them to leave because they don’t have that money.”
Four different versions of Toledo are having a meeting in her head,
talking over each other, changing the subject, and somehow reaching the same conclusion:
“I can never finish anything because that’s how my brain sounds.”
Toledo was one of the few detainees who had a member of Congress visit her (although federal lawmakers are stepping up to get more involved every day with unannounced visits.)
Grijalva’s visit with Toledo was brief and “it was through the window,” Toledo said. The message Grijalva conveyed was “to tell me that it was going to be OK.”
While Toledo appears to have gotten through the worst of it, thousands of other detainees don’t have the social media following or political support that came together to help Toledo.
“A lot of people who have already signed deportations are still there and they’re just waiting, and that’s the most anxious part. You already gave up and just, ‘OK, take me back home,’ and they’re not doing it,” she said.
Now, Toledo says she’s trying to help raise money for her fellow detainees, some of whom have already been deported without important documents, including IDs and their passports they need to access services in their home countries.
She’s also taking on the role of “middleman of language barriers” and helping out her community, especially fellow DACA recipients.
@karlangas.toledo @La Santa Cecilia ❤️🩹
Toledo enjoying a peaceful afternoon of freedom on freedom on two wheels
just days after being released from the ICE detention center.
A long time coming: The City of South Tucson is suing the owner of the former Spanish Trail Motel, which city officials said in a news release is now “asbestos filled rubble.” The city is suing under a state law that allows courts to prevent public nuisances and properties that are “offensive to the senses.”
“This property has been a burden on our community for far too long. It impacts our property values, the safety of our streets, and the pride we take in our community,” Vice Mayor Melissa Brown-Dominguez said.
What could go wrong?: Over in Cochise County, the Sheriff’s Office and every municipal police department are going to use the same iris scanners that ICE uses, per Jerod MacDonald-Evoy at the Arizona Mirror. The company that makes the scanners, BI2 Technologies, says it has a database with more than 1 million scans of irises. The sheriff’s office didn’t answer questions about how the tech will be used or whether ICE will get access to the data.
Filling the void: A new school for blind and visually impaired students is opening in downtown Tucson, right as the Arizona Schools for the Deaf and Blind relocates to Oro Valley, Shannon Conner reports for the Arizona Luminaria. The idea for the Tucson School for the Blind, a nonprofit private school, arose in February after ASDB officials voted to close the westside campus. The new school will serve K-12 students starting in August.
Not a total loss: Pima County lost out on a $213,000 contract when the Iranian soccer team relocated its World Cup training site from the Kino Sports Complex to Tijuana, Jimmie Van Wickler reports for the Tucson Weekly. But county officials said they developed a relationship with FIFA that could be lucrative in the future, the groundskeeping team was trained by FIFA turf experts and, looking back, the whole experience was a good test run for local tourism organizations, law enforcement, health care providers and others that helped prep for the Iranian team.
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Budget vs. benefits: A partnership that lasted three decades is coming to a close this month now that the Pima County Sheriff’s Department is ending the contract for GED classes at the Pima County Jail, the Tucson Sentinel’s Mia Kortright reports. Sheriff Chris Nanos said Pima Community College wanted $170,000 for next fiscal year, which he didn’t think was justified, considering less than 10 GED degrees were earned at the jail over the past five years. In an op-ed in the Sentinel, PCC Governing Board Member Kristen Randall said the decision to end the program was a “painful shock” and Nanos is “measuring the wrong thing.”
“The average stay in the Pima County Jail is approximately 14 days. Very few people will complete an entire GED in two weeks. That does not mean education failed, it means the educational journey began,” Randall writes.
You readers have sent intern George more than a dozen record request ideas this month — including everything from politicians’ conflicts of interest, environmental concerns, to status updates on government programs and their effects.
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The guy who was indicted for trying to derail the 2022 election results says he doesn’t need a “babysitter.”
Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby doesn’t like having the county attorney, or anybody other than the supervisors and the clerk, in the room when the board has confidential executive sessions, the Herald/Review’s Matt Hickman reports.
He’s not alone. Supervisor Kathleen Gomez says when she was running for supervisor she thought she’d be one of “the bosses” and she doesn’t want an attorney telling her what to do. Supervisor Frank Antenori said “it just isn’t smart” to require the county attorney or administrator to attend executive sessions.
Any bets on how long it will be before the supervisors come out of an executive session with an idea that either gets the county sued or leads to an embarrassingly awkward explanation from staff about why the county clearly can’t do it?