Protection for All
Don Zama at a September rally for the Protection for All Movement, a newly organized group in Chicago advocating for DACA recipients and other undocumented people.
Angelica Magana, 33, works in human resources and finance at a healthcare technology startup. Maria Torres, 29, is a national field organizer at Interfaith Worker Justice and a graduate student at Northeastern Illinois University. Mateo Uribe Rios, 24, attends the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and works as a restaurant host. Liliana Armas Serna, 19, is a communications major at Harold Washington College.
All four of them are among the estimated 800,000 undocumented immigrants enrolled in the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, and whose plans for the future are in turmoil after President Donald Trump signed an order on September 5 repealing the program six months hence, absent congressional action.
Trump has since signaled a willingness to work with Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill to maintain protections for DACA recipients beyond that date, albeit with their cooperation on a border security package. “We are working on a plan for DACA,” he told reporters in mid-September, drawing considerable conservative ire.
Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have signaled a willingness to work on the plan and deliver DACA recipients from their current state of limbo. "The only thing that stands between you and the certainty in your life is the Congress," said Republican Senator Lindsay Graham during a joint press conference with Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, with whom Graham has co-sponsored a bill to provide permanent resident status and a path to citizenship for DACA recipients. “That cannot be that reassuring. The Congress is going to have to up its game.”
DACA protected those who arrived in the U.S. before age 16 and before the year 2007 from deportation, and provided them with renewable two-year work permits, as long as they don’t commit serious crimes. Some estimate that a total of 1.2 million people were eligible for DACA, 365,000 of them high school students and another 241,000 enrolled in college. Another estimate held that about 160,000 of the 800,000 actually enrolled in DACA are college students.
Plans range from fighting to stay in the U.S., slipping back into the shadows, and making a sorrowful exit.
In the more than two weeks since Trump’s devastating decision, Congress has been more focused on repealing the Affordable Care Act and putting together a tax reform package than moving forward on DACA, so prospects remain uncertain. As the fates of these ambitious young people hang in the balance, they are putting plans in place. Weighing their own circumstances, they face choices to stay put and fight, slip back into the shadows of undocumented life, or make a sorrowful exit.
Angelica Magana
Magana came to the U.S. at age 8 from Mexico and grew up in suburban Des Plaines; she now lives in Chicago’s Irving Park neighborhood. Her father stocks shelves at a grocery store, and her mother works at McDonalds. She hasn’t returned to Mexico since she left, partly for fear of “serious repercussions” upon attempting to reenter the U.S.. Her memories of her birth country are “pretty vague.”
Trump’s action had been rumored for weeks, but Magana still found it “shocking.” She has now moved past the shock and is organizing undocumented people “who want to fight back” as part of a new group called Protection for All, which held a rally in downtown Chicago on September 5. The group advocates for legal status for all undocumented immigrants, not just DACA recipients, disdaining the term “dreamers” as dividing the community into “good” and “bad” immigrants.
If Trump and Congress do not act within the next six months, Magana says, “I am prepared to continue to fight. I don’t plan on giving that fight up until we have protection for all. This is my home. I’m going to stay here. If they want to deport me, they’re going to have to drag me out, kicking and screaming.”
Maria Torres
Torres, who came to the U.S. at 15, is working on a master’s degree from Northeastern Illinois, after which she plans to continue her work as a social justice organizer to protect people in vulnerable immigrant communities. “I have a responsibility to be part of the movement,” she says. “My parents are still undocumented. They still need healthcare; they still deserve better working conditions.”
Trump’s decision to rescind DACA did not surprise Torres, who’s also part of Protection for All. While she’s feeling frustrated, sad and fearful for herself and even more vulnerable members of her community, she also says, “it is a feeling of hope to see the response we received from the community, allies and other undocumented folks trying to join the fight.”
Torres’ DACA eligibility does not expire until 2019, but if the program is not renewed, she says, “I have lived being undocumented. I am not afraid to go back to being undocumented. I am prepared to try to find employment as an independent contractor or doing something else.” She notes it’s easier for her as someone with no children or mortgage.
“Still, I’m scared. I’m stressed out,” she says. “I don’t wish upon anybody to have that feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen in their life.”
Mateo Uribe Rios
Born in Colombia and brought to the U.S. at age 6, Uribe Rios was raised in suburban Berwyn, Illinois and now lives on the North Side of Chicago with his wife, an American citizen. His mother and father work, respectively, as a nanny and a waiter. Another Protection for All member, he hopes to work in the nonprofit sector on immigrant issues upon finishing at University of Chicago.
Of Trump’s announcement, he says, “it was like a relationship you knew was going to end, you were waiting for them to just say it already...I definitely had to take a step back, absorb the moment, and cry a little bit, throughout the day.”
Uribe Rios has better options than some DACA recipients. Because his eligibility expires in February—before the deadline of March 5—he has the option to extend for another two years before his enrollment runs out, at a cost of $495, ensuring that he could finish school in the U.S.. As someone married to an American citizen, he could apply for permanent residency, but that would be $1,500, a steep cost for a graduate student—and he would need to do that by March 5 or risk deportation. “It’s all about opportunity cost,” he says.
Liliana Armas Serna
“Forgive me if I get emotional,” says Armas Serna, who came to the U.S. at 15 months old from Mexico and hopes to continue her education at Northwestern University. “I am a person who likes to plan out what I want to do. I had a plan—go to Harold Washington college, go to Northwestern. Now that they’re planning to take DACA away, I feel like I’m not on stable ground anymore. I don’t know where I’m going to be in a year if they take it away.”
If DACA is not somehow reinstated, Armas Serna says she will consider pursuing educational opportunities outside the U.S., perhaps in Spain. “I don't have the heart to wait around and hope something’s going to happen for me,” she says. “It hurts so much to think about it. This is my home. I grew up here. If I were to go back to Mexico—that’s not my home. My Spanish isn’t even that great. Where would I go?”
Armas Serna remembers her mother sobbing during a parent-teacher conference when she was in eighth grade because the teacher had said she had no future in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant. “It broke her heart because she thinks it’s all her fault that I’m in this situation,” she says. “She thought she was doing something good. We’re just like everyone else. We have the same hopes, dreams and ambitions. Unfortunately, because of our birthplace, we’re at a disadvantage. There’s no reason we should be at a disadvantage."
“I don’t want to live in a country that doesn’t want me and won’t give me equal opportunity,” Armas Serna adds. “Although it would be sad to leave, I’m very open to looking at that option.”