An immigrants’ rights activist who had rallied significant community support in recent weeks as he fought his own potential deportation, was arrested in Berkeley on Sunday for allegedly trying to steal several cars.
Longtime San Jose resident Guillermo Medina Reyes, 31, made headlines earlier this month after he rallied hundreds of supporters to a federal courthouse in San Francisco as he battled against his own deportation. Reyes was born in Mexico and brought to the US by his parents at age six, but his story is complicated by a criminal record — he served 10 years is prison for an attempted murder conviction when he was 16.
After being paroled, he spent another two years in an ICE detention facility before being released in 2023, with an immigration judge determining that he was not a danger to society…