The activists who are promoting the comprehensive immigration reform goals of de facto amnesty and open borders admit to taking a page from the gay rights handbook: using the tactic of “coming out” as a means of attempting to normalize their status. This admission comes from Lizbeth Mateo, an illegal immigrant who is part of the “Dream 9” group of activists and who is with the National Immigrant Youth Alliance.

Mateo, whose describes herself in her Twitter biography as a “Mex illegal immigrant, raised in LA” talks about the tactic in a long video interview with her that was posted to YouTube in June, 2013. In response to a question about what other movements have influenced her group, she says:

Our movement has become stronger after young people started coming out as undocumented and now our parents are telling their stories and saying “I’m also undocumented, I’m also part of this community.” So, the idea of ‘coming out’, we took that from the LGBT movement, from coming out as gay.

Imitation in this case is not flattery. Breitbart News asked gay conservative Ross Hemminger from the group GOProud about the appropriated tactic, who said:

It’s shameful. There are stronger words I could use, but I will go with shameful. Being gay isn’t the same as breaking the country’s immigration laws. Illegal immigrants aren’t being criticized as people but for decisions they or their families made. I’m at a loss for words.

This “coming out as an illegal alien” tactic has been a key part of the ‘Immigrant Youth Movement’, as discussed in books like Undocumented & Unafraid by the UCLA Labor Center:

Undocumented and Unafraid: Tam Tran, Cinthya Felix, and the Immigrant Youth Movement is the second book on this topic published by the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education. The previous publication, Underground Undergrads: UCLA Undocumented Immigrant Students Speak Out, was the first book in the country written by and about these young people. Since then, the immigrant youth movement has developed into a significant force nationally.

Undocumented and Unafraid has emerged as a slogan for the new immigrant youth movement. No longer living in the shadows, undocumented students are coming out, organizing, advocating for change in immigration policy, and building a new civil rights movement.

It’s little wonder the radical activists are unafraid. The tactic has worked due in large part to the Obama administration’s lack of enforcement of existing immigration laws. Activists like the “Dream 9” that Mateo is part of have been blatantly and theatrically violating U.S. policy with few real consequences. As the Los Angeles Times reported:

Last month, the five women and four men, who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, staged an unconventional and risky protest at the U.S.-Mexico border to spotlight the thousands of people deported under the Obama administration.

When the Dream 9 — named for the Dream Act, which would provide such immigrants a path to legalization — attempted to reenter the U.S. at the Nogales, Ariz., port of entry on July 22, they were arrested. They had been in federal custody since.

On Tuesday, immigration asylum officers found that all nine had credible fear of persecution or torture in their birth country and could therefore not be immediately removed.

Their cases now go to an immigration judge, who will decide whether to grant asylum. The process could take years to litigate, experts said.

The use of asylum defense and the claim of “credible fear of persecution or torture” in an interesting one in Ms. Mateo’s case, since she voluntarily chose to return to Mexico in a political stunt. As the Huffington Post reported in late July:

Nine undocumented youths were stopped and held for questioning at the border Monday as they attempted to cross back into the United States from Mexico through a legal port of entry.

In an audacious move even from a group known for pushing boundaries, the National Immigrant Youth Alliance organized the crossing at the Arizona border town of Nogales as a protest against President Barack Obama’s record-setting pace of deportations.

“Millions of families like mine have been separated for far too long,” Lizbeth Mateo, an organizer with NIYA, wrote in a blog piece published by The Huffington Post on Monday. “I waited 15 years to see my grandfather again, and to meet the rest of my family.”

Lizbeth Mateo has also claimed to have received employment in the United States as a leftist community organizer for the ROC-DC, as reported by Breitbart News. It is a violation of labor law to hire illegal immigrants.

Ms. Mateo begins her first day of law school in Santa Clara, California on Monday.