Dreamer Says Good Night, Takes Gun and Gives Up on Life

By Aviva Kamler

Dressed in his Sunday best, the teenage boy said goodnight to his family, stepped into the bathroom and gave up on life in the United States as an undocumented immigrant.

Joaquin Luna, 18, took a gun on the day following Thanksgiving and fired a shot to his head that killed him instantly at the family residence in Mission, Texas where he was raised by his mother, Santa Mendoza Lorma.

In a final conversation with his older brother Diyer Mendoza, 35, Joaquín said he felt he couldn’t accomplish his dreams because “there was a big wall in front of him.”

While Joaquín reportedly left suicide notes, the Mission Police Department has yet to release them or close its investigation.

A senior at Benito Juárez-Abraham Lincoln High School, Joaquín had been applying for admission to various Texas colleges. The Saturday after his death, an acceptance letter from the University of Texas, Pan American arrived in the mail.

Born in Reynosa, Mexico, the boy aspired to a career as an engineer. In his application to the College Assistance Migrant Program, he wrote, “I’ve set up goals to become the first in my family to go to college and have fought

hard to get to where I stand now. I have confidence that the C.A.M.P. program can help me become that person I’ve always dreamed of becoming.”

The stories have reported that Luna’s family is certain the stress of being an undocumented citizen had finally surmounted him. Mendoza also said his younger brother was “a great student, never getting grades below

an A or a B. He was one of the smartest kids at school” and his passion was for math and with his computer had developed his own blueprints for designing houses.

With his dreams shaken by the failure of the DREAM Act to pass Congress, supporters of the bill are viewing him as a martyr. “I think he did it to have politicians have more heart, and give other kids the opportunity he was never given,” his brother said.

The Mission Police Department has yet to complete its investigation into Joaquín’s death, but the story about the “DREAMER” is already spreading internationally.

On Dec. 1, as Joaquín lay in a casket, hundreds of young friends and other students statewide whom he had never met were on hand in Mission to lend support to his family, U.S. Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, (D-Mercedes) took to the House floor in Washington, D.C., to deliver Luna’s message.

“Now more than ever, we must give these young people an opportunity to pursue their college and career goals, resolve their immigration status and earn their citizenship,” he implored.