Blanche Petrich
La Jornada Newspaper
Monday, October 20, 2025, p. 18
Five days ago, the youngest member of the Sumud Flotilla, the Mexican Arlín Medrano, posted a message on her Almost immediately, Christopher Landau, US Undersecretary of State, responded with a label he created on his official X account, with a stamp called The Visor Remover.
It is the same image that the former ambassador in Mexico has sent to Mexican officials, to university students in the United States or to hundreds of foreigners residing in his country, whom many times, under trivial pretexts, the State Department has, in effect, revoked their visas.
But the visa revoked for Arlín Medrano does not exist.
The activist replied to the undersecretary: “Don’t worry. Maybe if I had the opportunity to investigate, I would know that you arrived late, I don’t have a visa: I was a migrant girl deported at age 12, treated as a criminal for the ‘crime’ of going to school in the United States, like millions of migrant brothers and sisters.”
He was asked in an interview if the revocation was official or if he received any notification.
Arlín, who just two weeks ago remained imprisoned in the maximum security prison of Ktziot, in Israel, along with the more than 400 participants of the odyssey of the Sumud Flotilla, which tried to break the blockade of Gaza by sea, responds: “Well, the revocation notice was published on Landau’s official and verified account.”
undocumented girl
When he was seven years old, Arlín Medrano emigrated with his family to the United States (to Phoenix, Dallas, and finally New Orleans). “It was in 2007. I am from Tepic. At that time, things in Nayarit became very violent… times of Felipe Calderón.
“We had to see the violence very closely. One day they entered my school shooting. And sometimes, on the way to school along Tepic-Xalisco Boulevard, we had to see people hanging, something very shocking for girls like us.”
They emigrated like so many thousands, with tourist visas. The mother supported the family by working at home and in various jobs. Arlín finished his primary school. But one day, during a raid, an immigration officer began to question her. “Anti-immigrant raids are not a thing of today, they always existed. I got confused during the interrogation and they detained us. We were detained for 48 hours in an immigration station in Houston, treated like criminals. Then they deported us.”
Since then, as she answers in her post to Landau, “for consistency, I have never applied as an adult” for a visa to the United States. And he adds: “If telling the truth prevents me from entering your country, I wear it as a medal of honor. I stand by every word and I also stand by my solidarity with my migrant brothers and with the Palestinian people, both criminalized for existing, for resisting.”
The undersecretary, under scrutiny
Rather than discussing the issue of He Visor removeris interested in putting his finger on the heart of the debate. “The undersecretary’s message reveals his government’s complicity with the genocide in Gaza. And his government’s anti-immigrant and racist mentality.”
This university student and host of a public media news bar, “Mañanera 360”, became so involved with the Palestinian cause that she joined the Sumud Flotilla, made up of more than 40 boats with nearly 500 sailors from 44 different countries. It was an odyssey that left a deep mark on him.
“I had to sail the boat Adarawhich was one of those that suffered drone attacks and sabotage that caused technical failures while sailing.” It was the ship in which, among the 22 passengers that crossed the Mediterranean for a month, more Latin American women participated (Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru and Mexico) and which, on some routes, had to be the mother ship of the flotilla.
Among her companions “there was everything”: a taxi driver, MEPs, a Catalan retiree who wanted to leave inspiration for his granddaughter, some unemployed, a teacher, a psychologist, a doctor, a journalist and she, the youngest of the fleet, a Mexican university student.
“It was a kidnapping”
After what, he points out, “was not an arrest, but a kidnapping, because we must give importance to the true meaning of the words,” Arlín explains that among the six Mexicans who participated in the flotilla there are those who individually are thinking of following up through legal, national or international means, which they consider a criminal action by the Israeli State.
“But it will be a decision for each person. I am first concentrating on my health. But yes, I am seriously considering seeing what legal course I can follow. Although I want to be very cautious,” he explains.
But first, there is a long way to go, he insists. “We must not stop denouncing what is happening in Palestine; we must not stop explaining that the supposed peace agreement does not mean peace. We must demand more forceful actions from our governments. We must talk and talk about Palestine until we break the algorithm.”
