A dream realized
America is filled with immigrants like Houston project manager Frida Adame, who is paying it forward
As Frida Adame worked alongside her mother, selling lights in the shapes of unicorns and flowers at Discovery Green, a feeling of shame swelled up inside her.
She was 14, Mexican and undocumented, which afforded her no privilege and made her invisible, an outsider in an unfamiliar country. Mostly, she said, she was embarrassed to be standing outside the park’s ice rink, afraid of being seen by a classmate or, worse, found out and deported.
Adame, now 26, is the Texas project manager for the Conroebased Ice Rink Events, one of the nation’s top ice-rink builders and operators — which runs the ice rink at Discovery Green.
She’s also a “Dreamer,” a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which she earned at age 19. The DACA program, which was started in 2012 by President Barack Obama, has protected approximately 700,000 young immigrants, brought to the United States as children, from deportation. (DACA recipients are often called “Dreamers” after the DREAM Act — Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors — a federal proposal that offered many of the same protections as DACA but was never approved in Congress.)
President Joe Biden had issued a memorandum protecting DACA on his first day of office. But on Friday, a federal judge in Houston ruled the program unlawful. Andrew Hanen of the United States District Court said Obama exceeded his authority when he created the program by executive order. “Dreamers” for now will be able to stay and work in the country, though they may lose those protections if the government cannot rectify the legal shortcomings identified by the court, according to the New York Times.
“Growing up, I was very embarrassed about a lot of things,” Adame said. “I felt embarrassed about the fact that I wasn’t documented and that Mom wasn’t documented. I was embarrassed about being an immigrant and that I had an accent. I was embarrassed that we didn’t have a house to live in. I was embarrassed about who I was.”
Adame came to the United States at age 10, wading across the Rio Grande with her mother and sister in hope of a better life. Her mother told her that if she didn’t make it across the border, she was certain young Frida would go on to do great things.
Adame’s father was already in the United States; her parents
later divorced, and he was deported when she was 15.
Still, great things did happen for her. Adame crossed paths with people who would help her along, including Zuri Kadirifu, a Black man from Chicago’s South Side whom she met working at Discovery Green. He was a parttime security guard at the park.
When Adame graduated from Alief Hastings High School, Kadirifu gave her the $450 she needed for the DACA application, which once approved would give her the legal documents needed to get her first real job — handing out skates at the rink.
“Something in my spirit said, ‘She’s going to be something special and do great things,’ ” said Kadirifu, who works for the city of Houston. “I didn’t have a lot of people in my life who gave me an opportunity to fulfill my dreams. Sometimes people need a leg up to springboard them to where they want to go. I saw that potential.”
Kadirifu said he never told anyone what he’d done, but he would reach out to Adame on occasion to see how things were going.
“I’m so proud of her. It brings me joy to know that I helped to make a difference in her life,” he said.
Kadirifu wasn’t the only one who helped. Michael Clayton, who founded Ice Rink Events and served as the company’s CEO, also saw her potential. He promoted Adame to supervisor, then to assistant manager and on up. Clayton died in February after a brief illness.
Her first management training was intimating, Adame said. She found herself “in a room of all white people, all men, and me, a little 19-year-old Frida, who was Latina, short and with a thick accent. The fact that Mike saw something in me, I still can’t comprehend it. Mike wasn’t my dad, but he was the closest father figure I’ve had.”
Before Clayton died, he had emailed me expressing his support for my annual Year of Joy holiday ice skating event at Discovery Green. The event brings hundreds of children from underserved communities in Houston to the rink for a holiday party and ice skating lessons. He offered additional help if I needed it.
I emailed Clayton back to tell him how grateful I was but never got a response. I later learned of his death and discovered that his genuine desire to help people was universal. Adame reached out and shared how much he did for her and how he had supported her dream.
Adame has become an immigration advocate and member of United We Dream, a national youth organization to fight for citizenship for undocumented people, including those in her family. She uses social media to bring awareness to immigration issues.
America is made of “Dreamers” like Adame — and people who help make their dreams a reality. Adame is a dancer (at age 22, she appeared on NBC’s “World of Dance” with Jennifer Lopez), and last year, she married her high school sweetheart, Brandon Gomez, a technician at Apple and a Mexico native who became a U.S. resident two years ago.
“I was born in Mexico, but in reality, I really do consider myself American,” she said. “I’ve been paying my taxes since I started working. I know that there are so many people who are even more talented than I am and can do so much more than I can, but they haven’t had the opportunity, the chance. That’s all they need.”