City’s most famous Dreamer is now a parent
Benita Holguin looks back before that fateful day in 2009 and settles on one word to describe her younger self: naive.
“I was very naïve,” she says several times.
That was before her arrest, before the threat of her deportation and before she became nationally recognized as the face of Dreamers in the United States.
Then known under her birth name Benita Veliz, the young college graduate grew up in San Antonio as an academic standout.
The valedictorian at Jefferson High School earned a bachelor’s degree in St. Mary’s University’s honors program, majoring in biology and sociology.
She dreamed of going to law school but couldn’t qualify for student aid or be able to take the bar exam as an undocumented immigrant, she said.
Holguin was waiting for Congress to pass the DREAM Act.
She believed nothing bad could happen to her in a country she considered so good and now her own.
“They’re not focused on people like me,” she said about her outlook before a police officer pulled her over for allegedly rolling past a stop sign.
“They’re focused on criminals, not good people, not people contributing to society.”
For the next several years, she fought her deportation case in public, a symbol for millions of others who were brought to this country illegally as children and grew up as Americans.
Some of them didn’t know they were undocumented until they became adults.
Holguin became the face of their movement, working to pass the DREAM Act and support President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
DACA protected Dreamers from deportation and allowed them work permits. But they had to show qualifications such as educational pursuits.
Holguin’s life was wellknown. She was the first undocumented immigrant to speak at a national convention of a major political party, and her speech was nationally televised.
A headline for a New York Times editorial about her said, “Don’t Deport Benita Veliz.”
When her deportation case was resolved, she drifted out of the headlines.
She never applied for DACA. Already married to a U.S. citizen, she applied for permanent residency. She later became a naturalized citizen.
She has worked as a math teacher, college counselor and after-school program coordinator. She’s now a part-time pastor in an Assembly of God Pentecostal church and sells real estate, too.
Holguin and her husband, Josue, a full-time pastor, faced adversities, including his bout with pancreatitis, which brought on serious complications that threatened his life.
They survived with medical debt they’ve been able to pay off.
Most importantly, they became foster parents, then adopted the three children they took in.
They continue to live in San Antonio.
So many other Dreamers have marked similar milestones without citizenship.
Some are protected by DACA, referring to themselves as “Dacamented.” Some who were eligible never applied.
Today, new DACA applications are being collected but aren’t being processed pending the outcome of a court ruling.
They’re young adults who aren’t U.S. citizens yet have no real memory of living in their originating countries before coming to the U.S..
For Holguin, that was age 8. She’s now 37 and has been married for a decade.
A lawsuit filed by Texas and other Republican-led states still seeks to have them removed, charging that the Obama program was wrongfully instituted.
The DREAM Act remains elusive. A divided nation and even more divided Congress sees immigration, even legal immigration, and asylum as threats to U.S. society.
In December, the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration estimated as many as 3 million potential Dreamers could benefit from its passage.
Holguin is no longer involved in immigration-related work.
“At some point,” she said, “I was no longer undocumented. I was no longer the face of it.”
That traffic stop was 14 years and a lifetime ago.
Today her focus is 3-year-old Mia, 5-year-old Joshua and his half-brother Nathan, who is 9.
Her husband is their church’s community pastor. He runs the food pantry, does outreach, teaches and oversees a Spanishlanguage congregation.
“I don’t think it could have turned out better,” she said of their decision to foster. “I have an overwhelming feeling that I was meant to be their mother. It makes no difference to me that I didn’t carry them in my womb.
“My husband was always meant to be their father,” she added. “They even look like us.”
There’s no room for regret in their lives, especially about her immigration work.
“I’m grateful that my story had some sort of impact, however small.”
She still interacts with immigrant, working-class and Spanish-speaking communities at church and in her realty business, when they’re ready to become homeowners.
If there’s one nagging regret, it’s that the case of Dreamers remains open, unsettled.
Congress has had the opportunity to pass a dozen versions of the Dream Act. All have failed.