A Georgia college student is now facing deportation after running a red light, which led to authorities discovering her family had been living in the U.S. illegally for nearly 15 years.

Ximena Arias-Cristobal, 19, a native of Mexico, was charged with driving without a valid license and failure to obey traffic control devices after failing to adhere to a "no turn on red" sign in Dalton on May 5, WTVC reports. The Dalton State Community College student told police that she had an international driver's license before ultimately admitting she didn't have one when officers asked her to show it, claiming her mother took it away from her and she wasn't supposed to be driving.

Authorities found that Arias-Cristobal was brought into the U.S. by her parents illegally when she was 4 years old and had been paying out-of-state tuition despite living in the area because of her non-citizen status. The officer who pulled her over attempted to speak to the driver's mother and the owner of the vehicle but neither spoke English, the report states.

Arias-Cristobal was transported to the Whitfield County Jail, which partners with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) program to identify illegal migrants living in the U.S. and the federal database confirmed that Arias-Cristobal was not a U.S. citizen when her name was processed.

“This program operates based on a series of reviews and background checks completed only after an inmate is already arrested for an Offense under Georgia Law,” the jail’s operation guide said via the New York Post.

Arias-Cristobal was transported to ICE's Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin where her father, Jose Francisco Arias-Tovar, has been held since being pulled over for driving 19 miles over the speed limit last month. Arias-Tovar, who owns his own company, was denied paperwork to stay in the U.S. and it's unknown whether he ever applied for citizenship.

“My dad has his own company, and they called a lawyer to see if they could get a job permit or a visa, and they said that they hadn’t hit that status to get one yet,” Arias-Cristobal’s younger sister told WTVC.

Arias-Cristobal wasn't eligible for the DACA program, which provides temporary protection from deportation and work authorization for certain young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children, as she arrived one year after the program ended, according to Hannah Jones, who previously babysat for her when she was a child and created a GoFundme to raise money for bond and an immigration attorney for the teenager.

Arias-Cristobal's mother is expected to be arrested and deported within a month and her daughters will be taken with her to keep the family together, according to Chattanooga-based attorney, Terry Olsen, who was critical of the family's detention.

“We do see that ICE is really trying to find any and all methods to say that an international has some way violated the process and their status. What’s concerning is that when they are being checked at these checkpoints or at the stops, ICE does not have their entire immigration file in front of them, they’re not looking at all of it, and they’re just relying on one item. This is a civil rights issue,” Olsen told WTVC.

Simon Conway