Two UCLA graduates killed in Maine crash

Tam Ngoc Tran of Orange County and Cinthya Felix of East Los Angeles had been activists for the DREAM Act, the proposed law to grant citizenship to undocumented students like themselves. Tran testified before Congress in 2007 and was studying at Brown for a doctorate in American studies. Felix was the first undocumented student admitted to Columbia University's School of Public Health. They were killed in a car crash yesterday in Maine. Gustavo Arellano of the OC Weekly reacts to the news:

Tam Ngoc Tran was everything an illegal immigrant isn't supposed to be: non-Mexican. College-educated--scratch that, a college graduate. Fully assimilated. A contributor to this country rather than a leech. American.

She was among the country's more prominent undocumented college students, a 2007 graduate of UCLA pursuing a doctorate at Brown University who had previously testified before Congress in favor of the DREAM Act, a proposed bill that would grant citizenship to the hundreds of thousands of young people who illegally came to this country as children, did what they were supposed to do as students, and went on to college.

At Change.org: "Tam is probably best known as the DREAM Act student who testified in Congress and had to go into hiding shortly after when ICE retaliated by detaining her parents. She was born to Vietnamese parents in Germany, but neither country would accept her, making her stateless in the United States when she arrived here at the young age of six." Also a news story from Maine. Facebook page