A national campaign is underway to allow some undocumented students to become permanent residents. In Portland, a 24-year-old man named Selvin Arevalo has become one of the faces of the movement. Supporters held a rally this afternoon outside Cumberland County Jail, where Arevalo, a student and house painter, is facing deportation after he was involved in a motor vehicle accident, and police discovered his illegal status.

"In Guatemala, where he was born, the chances that he would be able to do what he has been able to do for his family here was non-existent," says Blanca Santiago, executive director of the advocacy group El Centro Latino Maine.

She says that if passed by Congress, the so-called DREAM Act would have spared Arevalo -- an aspiring computer technician -- the ordeal of leaving the country he's lived in since he was 14. "If we don't pass the DREAM Act then we will have failed the youth, and we actually are cutting short the promise that so many young people have to offer us in the future."

It's unclear how many people are deported from Maine each year, but Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion says he sees dozens of them in his jail. "It's quite commmon. We've had sometimes over 50 individuals held here at Cumberland County Jail facing one type or other of immigration violation."

But Arevalo's case had generated more attention because of the community he created for himself after arriving in the United States 10 years ago. His friends say he crossed the border with the help of a paid escort known as a coyote, and made his way up to Maine where his older brother lives.

"I remember first meeting him, he was one of the shyest person I thought that I had ever met," says Isai Galvez, a 20-year-old college student who became close friends with Arevalo at their Pentecostal church in Portland. He says over the last decade, his friend blossomed into an outgoing youth leader who spoke English well, strummed Christian rock on his guitar and played soccer.

Galvez says that Arevalo had never gotten into trouble with the law until April 9, when he caused a fender bender near a Home Depot in Portland. "He panicked, and he went into the Home Depot parking lot. There was an officer came and called in the other officers. They arrested him. I think that's when he said he was illegal because he got scared because of his status," Galvez says.

Police contacted immigration officials and charged Arevalo with leaving the scene of an accident, and charged him with operating without a license. Arevalo has been jailed ever since.

Arevalo's brother, who asked not to be named because he is also undocumented, says that he lives in constant fear that the same fate will befall him, and rarely leaves the house except to go to work. "Now my brother's incarcerated right now, that it completely takes over my life, and sometimes I can't even sleep at night thinking about it," Arevalo's brother says, as Galvez translates.

Arevalo's supporters say that authorities, short of stopping deportation proceedings, should at least release him from jail pending hearings. But some say that Arevalo does not deserve special treatment, let alone a path to citizenship that passage of the DREAM Act would give him.

"It doesn't help our situation to continually reward those who broke our laws with citizenship," says Jonette Christian, of Mainers for Sensible Immigration Policy. She says that instead of legalizing undocumented workers, the country should be focused on finding jobs for millions of Americans.

She says the DREAM Act doesn't address those concerns. "Once those students are given a pathway to citizenship, they can their sponsor all their parents who broke the law," Christian says. "And I think it's important to remember that all of the these poeople are the citizens of other countries. They have all the rights and benefits and educational opportunities of citizens in those countries, most of whom chose to respect our laws and stay home."

Arevalo can't count on the DREAM Act any time soon. It's been stuck in Congress for several years, and may or may not be part of comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

Based on the particulars of his case, Arevalo will likely have to leave the country, says immigration law expert Beth Stickney of the Immigration Law Advocacy Project. "The only options he would really have is, do you leave under an order of deportation or do you leave under an order of voluntary departure, but in either case you're leaving."

Stickney says Congress changed the law in 1996 to make it harder for someone to seek leniency for deportation. She says that members of Congress have the ability to advocate for an undocumented person so that they can stay in the U.S., but she says those cases are extremely rare, usually less than five a year, and she says they typically involve someone suffering from a life-threatening condition.