“Valedictorian, 4.5 GPA, full tuition paid for at UT, 13 cords/medals, nice legs, oh and I’m undocumented”, Mayte Lara Ibarra wrote in a 3 June tweet, after delivering her valedictorian speech.
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A screenshot of the now viral tweet from @maytelara29, who has since deleted her Twitter account.
Larissa Martinez told classmates at McKinney Boyd High School that she was one of the 11million undocumented citizens living in the United States after she fled her abusive and alcoholic father in Mexico. The University of Texas says no. The state also allows qualifying undocumented high school graduates to receive in-state tuition.
Over the past six years, Larissa thrived: She maintained a number-one ranking in her class year throughout high school, kept a 4.95 GPA, and took 17 AP classes.
Graduating as Valedictorian, Mayte Lara Ibarra thought she would share her accomplishments on Twitter.
Martinez received a scholarship to attend Yale through QuestBridge, a “national non-profit program that links bright, motivated low-income students with educational and scholarship opportunities at some of the nation’s best colleges”.
And then there was the sensitive tweet from a Twitter user by the name of Dana P. Dutcher: “I just hired a PI to track you down and have charges filed against you with ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].it was worth it”.
A spokesperson for the University of Texas at Austin says while they can’t say anything specifically about Ibarra, the university along with other Texas universities, “have for decades granted two-semester tuition waivers to valedictorians of Texas public high schools, without regard to their residency status”.
The ignorance doesn’t stop there – when social media trolls found out she worked at CVS Pharmacy, people went as far as to post on the company’s Facebook page about her.
The 18 year old, who has been offered a full scholarship to Yale, said she felt powerless and put down due to her status.
One critic, Hillary Shay Davis, who has a daughter who graduated with Ibarra, said she believed that the teenager was proud of “taking advantage of the system”. “University policies reflect that law”. Others have praised the students’ hard work.
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We have a feeling this is just the first of many great things to come in this young woman’s future! Added another: “People are completely ignoring the fact that she graduated with all those high honors …” She also said that she pays her taxes to the USA government and she has a social security and a DACA, which gives her the right to study in the country while working on her citizenship.
