For University of Illinois at Chicago junior Rigo Padilla, the countdown to deportation is now less than two weeks away.  And immigration reform activists are pulling out all the stops in an effort to push back the deadline.

Among them is Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, who yesterday filed a measure (H.R. 4212) seeking either a visa for Rigo or a change of legal status in the hopes of stalling his deportation. If Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, agrees to simply review the measure, Schakowsky's efforts will pay off.

At a downtown Chicago rally today, the north suburban congresswoman said she's "optimistic" about the 21-year-old's prospects. "But the struggle is so much bigger," she said. "We can't be doing this one, by one, by one. We now have to continue to organize using the symbol like this incredible young man ... as symbols, of not what we're going to do for them but we're going to do for ourselves as a country when we pass comprehensive immigration reform." Watch excerpts from the remarks by Schakowsky and State Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) at the event:

Rigo's case has garnered attention around Illinois and across the country. He was brought into the country at six years old and educated exclusively in American public schools. He's now paying for college entirely out of his own pocket.  Still, after getting convicted of a misdemeanor DUI offense, he's faced with the harsh reality that he could be expelled from this county in a matter of days.

Yesterday, Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown railed against the decision to deport the honors student, calling on lawmakers to exercise some "common sense discretion" until they figure out how to fix the nation's broken immigration laws for good:

Some day, we will sort out our great immigration mess and figure out what to do with those millions and millions of Mexicans who tried to live the American dream without first receiving our express permission [...]

But until we can reach some agreement, or one side gets the upper hand on the other, we ought to at least continue to use common-sense discretion in how we enforce our immigration laws. Even George Bush did that. And we ought to start by leaving Rigo Padilla alone.

Let him finish his education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Let him go on to law school and learn to become a lawyer like the ones he grew up idolizing on "Law and Order."

We'll be following the case closely, so stay tuned. In the meantime, go read Brown's full column here.