The future of DACA is grim. President-elect Donald Trump has continuously pledged to end the program and with a trifecta, the likelihood of the program ending is very high.
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For years, the program known as DACA has protected people who were brought to the U.S. at a young age. It stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The program has been caught up in court challenges since Trump’s first administration, and he promises mass deportations in his next term, which could include the immigrants protected under DACA. NPR’s Sergio Martínez-Beltrán reports.
SERGIO MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN, BYLINE: Jonathan Alvizo remembers exactly when he moved from Piedras Negras, Mexico, to Dallas, Texas.
JONATHAN ALVIZO: I actually got here two weeks before 9/11 happened.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: It was August 2001. He was 6 years old.
ALVIZO: So I saw everything go down, and I was like, wow – terrible time to get here.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: We’re talking outside his alma matter, a prestigious high school for the performing and visual arts in Dallas. This is one of many landmarks that are important to him. Another one is a gas station near the Dallas Zoo. It was where his parents stopped the truck they were driving once they got to the city.
ALVIZO: My story began right there. Even though I’m Mexican, I feel more American, honestly.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Alvizo is a DACA recipient, so he doesn’t have permanent legal status in the U.S. When his parents brought him here, they came with a visitor’s visa, which they overstayed. In 2012, Alvizo applied for the then-newly created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, an initiative that protects from deportation those who were illegally present in the country after entering as children before 2007. DACA allows them to get a work permit. However, they have to renew their status every two years. It’s been a privilege and life-changing, Alvizo says, but it has been bittersweet.
ALVIZO: It’s going to sound ridiculous what I’m about to say. But I tell my counselor, like, it always feels like I’m climbing a wall, and as soon as I try to get to the top and, you know, see to the other side, I just fall back down to the other side.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: That is because the program has been under constant threat. Republicans have gone after DACA, claiming that then-President Obama violated the law when he created it via executive order. During his first term in 2017, President Trump attempted to shut it down, but the U.S. Supreme Court blocked him. However, the court has become more conservative, and Stephen Miller, Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, has said the new administration will try again.
KARINA SERRATO SOTO: DACA is – it opens a lot of doors.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: DACA recipient Karina Serrato Soto was brought to the country by her mom in 1990, when she was 9 months old. She now teaches math at a middle school in Dallas. Trump’s victory has pushed Serrato Soto and her husband to prepare for the worst – deportation. They’ve talked to her mom about caring for their two children if that were to happen.
SERRATO SOTO: Because we have to be ready. We do not know what’s our future. We don’t know if he’s going to stop it. We don’t know what’s going to happen.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: But Serrato Soto says she’s ready to fight for DACA. For Jonathan Alvizo, the possibility of him getting deported has started to sink in.
ALVIZO: And I kind of realize now that freedom does not only exist in the United States. And there’s not just such a thing as an American dream. There can be a Mexican dream, you know? There’s also dreams on the other side of the border.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Alvizo says that whatever happens to DACA, he’s ready to live the two-year permit he just got renewed.
ALVIZO: But I don’t think I’m afraid of – anymore of leaving the country and taking my dream somewhere else because I want to have the same freedom that everyone else has, and I want to have the same rights that everyone else has.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, NPR News, Dallas.
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