‘I can keep dreaming’
In New Mexico, relief, joy over Supreme Court decision
Maria Santos came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant when she was just a toddler, knowing as she grew older the risk her family was taking to have her grow up in a land of opportunity.
At 17, she entered the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — DACA — and has used it as a springboard to launch a stable career, start a family and set goals for a future of which she and her loved ones can be proud.
On Thursday morning, however, she
sat quietly in her Santa Fe home waiting for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that had the potential to change her life.
The court’s 5-4 decision to block the Trump administration’s attempt to end DACA brought out the emotion.
“I literally cried, I was just speechless,” she said. “For now, I can continue with my normal life. I can keep thinking I have a job, I can keep thinking I will have an income for them. Most of all, I can keep dreaming.”
The decision, said Allegra Love, executive director of the Santa Fe Dreamers project, an initiative designed to protect and serve the DACA program and aid its recipients, was vital for those like Santos who are building lives and futures.
About 500 Dreamers in Santa Fe renew applications to stay in the country every year, Love said. But she noted the exact number of those directly tied to the program in the Santa Fe area is considerably higher.
“I walk into businesses, I walk into hospitals and I see these folks all around me, essential people,” Love said. “This is justice for them, but it’s always justice for me and you and all the people in our community who deserve to have immigrants living among us and thriving.”
Reaction to DACA’s reprieve poured in from elected officials around the state. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham lauded the decision, calling it long overdue.
“DACA recipients are our neighbors, our coworkers, and our friends, working to build lives for themselves and in the only country they have ever known,” she said in a statement. “They are an essential part of the very fabric of our community, and the protections offered to them by DACA are critical to both their individual safety and future and to the collective future of New Mexico.”
Hector Aveldano works in community service in Albuquerque and was a political activist who pushed for DACA when he lived in Española during the Obama administration. Like many in the program, he successfully applied as an adult and has spent the last several years worrying about the stability of its future.
He said the stress of knowing the Trump administration was trying to end DACA was an overwhelming sensation difficult to describe.
“There’s older DACA recipients such as myself who are in our mid-30s or late-30s who have U.S. citizen kids,” he said. “Coming from an immigrant family, that fear is just a reality. Since I was a little kid, I knew we weren’t here legally and could be sent back at any time. That’s hard to live with.”
Santos said she and her husband, himself a DACA recipient, along with a number of family members and neighbors, were treating Thursday’s news as a victory. As the director of operations for the Santa Fe Dreamers,
Santos took the day off and took her kids — ages 4 and 8 months — on a walk around the neighborhood.
“Being realistic, I’m holding onto DACA because of my kids,” Santos said. “I can’t imagine being taken away from them or anything happening to them if I was to be taken away. That’s one of my biggest worries with all this stuff.”
Love said another battle lies ahead as November’s elections approach — noting if Trump is re-elected, Dreamers again will likely be in the spotlight.
“The same thing that was true yesterday continues to be true today, which is our national leaders, our Congress, needs to pass stronger protection for these people and their families,” Love said. “That’s what this has always been about.”
Love said she has been encouraging her staff and anyone associated with Dreamers to take Thursday’s ruling and treat it as the best news possible. She said there are enough people who either know a Dreamer or have been affected by them, meaning DACA’s survival is a good thing.
“Our most immediate victory is knowing that these extremely valuable people in our community are safe for today,” Love said. “That cannot be underestimated, same as the justice of the moment.”