August 15, 2024

By Cristina Mendoza, UIC Graduate Student Intern

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was announced twelve years ago on June 12, 2012, and today, August 15th marks 12 years since applications began being accepted. Established by executive action in 2012, DACA provides certain undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children deferred action from removal proceedings and allows them to receive renewable work authorization every two years. As the program has aged, so have its beneficiaries. To learn more about their experiences with the program, we reached out to five Dreamers who have centered their careers around the fight for immigrant rights. 

Calls for greater reform to immigration policies, including DACA, continue reverberating throughout activist communities and immigrant rights organizations. While DACA protects an individual from deportation, it does not provide a pathway to permanent residency. “DACA was never a solution. DACA was a band-aid, and the real problem, the root of the problem, has not been fixed.” shares Sandra Diaz, Narratives Specialist at Alianza Americas in Chicago, Illinois. “I wish there was more… that DACA wasn’t the only conversation because I feel like everything with immigration and immigrant youth is focused on DACA when at this point DACA can only do so much, and it’s the only thing on their [politicians] minds.” 

Dulce Guzmán, Deputy Director for Institutional Development at Alianza Americas, agrees, “I think the North Star would be to roll out a program for people that are currently in the country undocumented. Everyone that's here. In the short term, it would be to expand programs like DACA, with initiatives such as the proposed but never implemented Deferred Actions for Parents of Americans (DAPA), which was meant to address undocumented parents. I think programs like that would be huge.” She continues, “Designating TPS (Temporary Protected Status) protections for Central American countries and making sure that we're continuing to renew those designations because the reality is that the conditions in our countries of origin are not safe. So, in the immediate future, I would like to see administrative relief for families. In the long term, there are other changes that should be enacted. For example, amending the registry date would lead to immigration benefits for many people.” 

In the 12 years since the program was launched, the first wave of children who applied for DACA is entering new life phases. Now in their late twenties to early forties, they are encountering a stage of adulthood that can often come with marriage, building a family, expanding their career, and obtaining more advanced degrees. Some have even found a pathway towards permanent residency, such as Gúzman and Carolina Ortiz, Associate Director of COPAL: Communities Organizing Latino Power and Action in Minnesota. While Gúzman is applying for permanent residency through marriage, she admits that she struggles with this new identity that has been presented to her. “Understanding my status and becoming a DACA recipient became such a part of my identity that it really took over the way I thought about my life,” she says. “The idea of not being that anymore or not speaking from that perspective, it just feels really difficult.” Ortiz, who recently received her green card through marriage, shares a similar sentiment, “I got married, and I now have my green card. So I now have that [permanent resident] status because of my marriage. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions and battles, ups and downs, with where we are right now.” 

The passion behind each individual's current work is clear throughout these interviews due to their personal experience with the U.S. immigration system. In addition to their careers, some are even obtaining more advanced degrees to better support the communities they work with, such as Daniela Carvajal, an immigrant rights organizer at Centro Presente in Boston, Massachusetts. Her work helps Central American women and girls navigate the U.S. immigration system and heal from trauma. Carvajal is currently pursuing her Master's in Clinical Social Work with hopes of better serving immigrants who are dealing with trauma. She shares, “I would love to combine the work I do now with the immigrant community and doing more clinical work because that’s something that is so needed right now.”

Today, DACA hangs in a precarious balance due to calls to end the program and recent increases in filing fees for many applicants. However, the fight for more pathways toward permanent protection for the broader immigrant community continues. “In every aspect, I think it’s beneficial for everybody. It’s just that anti-immigration views do not let us move forward,” states Ortiz. “I was lucky enough to find a man I loved, and I married, but how do we open that [pathway to permanent residency] up, and how do we actually create that process for people?” 

While calls to reform the program and other immigration policies continue, Luis López Reséndiz, Director of Operations at Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo (CIELO) in Los Angeles, makes it clear that while changes to or loss of the DACA program would be a hit to the undocumented community the fight for immigrant rights will continue much like it did before the DACA program. “Losing DACA just means going back to its origins: organizing and demanding for what, not just the DACA community, but the undocumented community deserves, which is a fair and real pathway to legalization.” 

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(These videos are only available in English)

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