On their way to Mexico to renew their tourist visas, 10-year-old Rodrigo Guzmán and his parents were stopped by US Customs and Border Protection at an airport in Houston. Officials with the agency took their Mexican passports and visas for reasons which Rodrigo's parents say were never explained to them. They were told to go on into Mexico, where they'd have to wait a minimum of five years to get new visas to re-enter the US, while nearly all of their possessions remained behind in Berkeley. When Rodrigo's friends and classmates in the fourth grade found out he had been deported, they launched a campaign to bring Rodrigo home and helped file a petition for humanitarian parole on his behalf. But with proceedings moving at a glacial pace, Rodrigo and his friends keep in touch through the video game Minecraft, which allows players to cooperate to construct a virtual world.
The Los Angeles Times described a scene in which students from Rodrigo's Jefferson Elementary School in Berkeley met at a local café to launch what they call "Rodrigo's World" on a rented server which has allowed them to access the same virtual Minecraft world from anywhere on the Internet. From his family's new home near Mexico City, Rodrigo could log in, too, appearing via Skype on a laptop which the other children passed around the room, while his avatar in "Rodrigo's World" mined materials to make Diamond Swords and Gold Pickaxes to fend off Endermen, Zombie Pigmen and Creepers. "I like that it lets you build whatever you want," Rodrigo told the LA Times via Skype. "I can create so much with my imagination."
In the real world, his friends continue to campaign on his behalf - online, on a Facebook page and a change.org petition, as well as offline, in a letter to President Barack Obama and a push for Berkeley's city council to pass a resolution asking Congress to "bring Rodrigo home". "We don't think it's right that Rodrigo wasn't allowed to come home," says the change.org petition. "We've known him since kindergarten, he's lived in Berkeley since before he can remember because he moved here when he was just a baby. In school we're learning about people like Martin Luther King, Jr, Cesar Chavez and Rosa Parks who stood up for what was right. But what about Rodrigo?...That's why we are joining our 4th grade classmates to ask our Senator, Dianne Feinstein, to bring Rodrigo home!"
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