Mary Lou Price

https://www.gofundme.com/u/580f65c4-cdcf-42ee-950d-a028a4a241da I started this fundraiser for Eduardo Benavente and his family. Eduardo is a high school student in Austin, Texas. He is also undocumented. His family left Guatemala when he was 11 to escape gang violence and death threats. They came to Austin, planning to apply for asylum. This past March Eduardo was picked up by ICE while riding home with a friend and was taken to the Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, TX. His family has been working to get him released for the last three months. Their legal expenses are now at $7000. His lawyer filed a habeas corpus to get him released, but the judge, notoriously unsympathetic to immigrants' cases, denied it, which means his family needs to raise more money to start an appeal. The purpose of this fundraiser is to raise money to pay the lawyer's fees. The family was able to borrow money to pay part of the bill, but they still owe $4000 and will likely need to pay more in the near future. I’ve visited Eduardo at the Detention Center several times. He’s a good kid. He helps his mom and his younger brother. He goes to school. He goes to church. He has never been in any kind of trouble. He is embarrassed to be in “jail” and scared he’ll never get out. Life in the detention center is not easy. Besides the barely edible food and the foul-smelling drinking water, there are many rules designed to make life difficult for residents and little effort to treat residents with compassion or dignity. Like his fellow detainees, he is not a criminal. Please help his family's efforts to get him released.