Dreamers: Immigration order repeal would be disastrous
Ahtziry Barrera played soccer, served as president of a community service club and graduated last spring at the top of her class at Colonial High School with a 5.0 GPA.
She grew up in a middle-class neighborhood east of Orlando and is a first-year student at Rollins College.
But her life in the United States didn’t start until she was 4. That’s when Barrera crossed the border from Mexico, at times getting separated from her mother during the weekslong journey and spending several days in a Texas home with strangers who only spoke English.
Now, the 18-year-old is afraid she’ll be forced to leave the country she calls home.
Before the election, Donald Trump vowed to overturn President Barack Obama’s 2012 executive order that allows undocumented immigrants such as Bar-
rera who came to the U.S. as children to live, work and attend school without threat of deportation.
“I established my whole life here now, and it will be difficult if he does repeal it,” she said. “It’ll be a completely life-changing thing, and I’ll have to say goodbye to everyone I basically grew up with. It’s hard thinking about it. Every time I do see a friend, it’s like ‘Am I going to see you again after the 20th?’ ”
Barrera is among more than 700,000 young adults, teenagers and children — known as the Dreamers — who have benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Participants must meet a host of other criteria, including having no felony or significant misdemeanor convictions.
DACA meant Barrera could receive a Social Security number, drivers license and a college education. But because it’s an executive order, Trump could reverse it almost instantly.
Trump’s intentions on DACA are fuzzy. Before the election, Trump vowed to send undocumented immigrants back to their native countries and revoke Obama’s executive order.
But in an interview last month with Time magazine, Trump said he intended to “work something out” for the Dreamers. U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., Trump’s pick for attorney general, said he thinks DACA is unconstitutional.
During a CNN town hall meeting in Washington, D.C., Thursday night, House Speaker Paul Ryan said he didn’t want to see DACA students forced to leave the country.
When host Jake Tapper pointed out that Trump pledged to deport the more than 11 million immigrants in the country illegally during the campaign, Ryan said Congress wouldn’t support that plan.
A spokeswoman for Trump didn’t respond to an email seeking clarification of his views.
An estimated 8,000 DACA-eligible people live in Orange County, and 102,000 live in Florida, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Like Barrera, many DACA recipients are students. The program requires applicants to have high school diplomas or GEDs, be enrolled in school or be honorably discharged from the military.
Central Florida school districts and many colleges, including Rollins, don’t keep numbers on undocumented students.
The University of Central Florida reported 132 DACA students during the fall semester, the most recent figure available, but it doesn’t track the overall number of undocumented students.
At Valencia College, 477 undocumented students were enrolled last fall, including about 200 with DACA status.
Local Dreamers are worried about their future, said Eli Garcia, a 27-year-old DACA recipient and volunteer at the Hope CommUnity Center, which supports immigrant families in Central Florida.
Garcia, who came from Mexico when she was 11, said receiving DACA status changed her life. She spent her teenage years in Apopka and remembers being told she couldn’t take driver’s education in high school because she wasn’t eligible for a learners permit. Now she has a drivers license and work permit. She’s studying social work at UCF and plans to graduate next year.
“This is something given to us, but it can be taken away,” she said. “It can go away by snapping your fingers.’’
Orlando immigration attorney Gail Seeram said she works with clients who only learn they aren’t citizens when they ask their parents for their Social Security numbers. She said ending DACA would penalize a generation of young immigrants.
“We’re just benefiting our country by allowing people to work and by allowing them to further their education,” she said.
Seeram said the Dreamers’ fears about Trump may be well-founded. By applying for DACA status, they’ve made themselves vulnerable by alerting the government they’re undocumented.
However, DACA recipients have long known that Obama’s order could be temporary, said David Ray, director of communications for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington D.C.based organization that opposes any form of amnesty.
The Dreamers are a “highly sympathetic group,” he said, and allowing them to stay could set a precedent.
“The problem with arguing for continued exemptions for them is it’s fairly clear that amnesty breeds amnesty,” Ray said.
Garcia said she hopes DACA is a stepping stone to more rights, even citizenship, for her and her peers.
“I know if we were able to win this, we can also win other things,” she said.
Barrera is more cautious, saying that she thinks the Dreamers still have to convince voters and policy makers that they should be able to stay.
“We haven’t knocked down their barriers and said, ‘This is our home. We’ve been here. We work here. We went to school here. We graduated here,’ ” she said.
Garcia and Barrera say they’re outspoken because they want the public to see them as examples of success for young undocumented immigrants.
As a DACA recipient, Barrera is not eligible for federal grants or loans, but she received scholarships from Rollins and private organizations that help cover her college education. A political science major, she said she wants to be an immigration or human rights lawyer.
She can’t vote, but she volunteers with an organization called Mi Familia Vota, helping Latinos register.
Hearing people repeat negative stereotypes about undocumented immigrants, particularly Mexicans, during the past year has been disheartening.
“I have to say, ‘No, I’m not that’ ” she said. “And constantly be repeating ‘No, that’s not me. That’s not who we are’ and constantly defend myself.”