‘Everything changed’: How 10 Arizona ‘dreamers’ were affected by DACA
In the minutes after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “winding down” of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program Tuesday, many Phoenix-area “dreamers” and their families broke down in tears, overwhelmed by uncertainty.
Others erupted in anger, calling President Donald Trump a coward and Sessions hateful before marching to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Phoenix headquarters.
A handful accepted the news quietly, saying they never expected DACA, which shielded from deportation young people brought to U.S. illegally when they were children, and allowed them to work legally, to help them per-
manently.
The program will be phased out starting in six months, allowing Congress to come up with a more permanent solution.
No matter their initial reactions, in the hours that followed, nearly everyone in the dreamer community reflected on what DACA status had meant after years of “living in the shadows.”
From attending school and working full time to becoming parents, they spoke with Arizona Republic reporters about the opportunities DACA had provided them and their children since its 2012 creation.
These are some of their stories.
Ellie Perez
Ellie Perez, one of the first dreamers to work for the city of Phoenix, broke down as she remembered her DACA work permit arriving in 2013.
“I was at the Phoenix Zoo, and my mom called and said it was there,” said Perez, 26. “Then, everything changed.”
Before DACA, Perez was enrolled in community college part time, because she couldn’t afford to go to school full time without in-state tuition rates. With DACA status, she was able to attend full time, get an associate degree and become the first person in her family to attend a four-year university.
Perez graduated in May with a bachelor’s in justice studies and works as an aide to Phoenix Councilwoman Kate Gallego. She previously worked as an Arizona field director for the Hillary Clinton campaign and as a labor organizer for the United Food and Commercial Workers union.
Though Perez’s work permit doesn’t expire until 2019, her financial responsibilities worry her, she said.
“I’ve lived undocumented before, but it would be very different now,” she said. “We bought our first home. I now have my education. I have a car. I have all of these things that I didn’t before. If I can’t work, it’s going to be more pressure to financially sustain myself.”
Perez said she will “keep fighting” for dreamers in the months ahead.
“This is a call to action for Congress,” she said.
“These people have been playing with our lives for the past 10 years. It’s irresponsible and it’s cruel of them to do this. If you’re an elected official in Arizona right now, you need to speak up and step up.”
Reyna Montoya
DACA recipient Reyna Montoya, 26, came to the U.S. at age 13. She founded Aliento, which advocates for young migrant children, in 2016.
DACA gave Montoya the chance to earn an education, she said: She has a political science degree from Arizona State University and a master’s in education from Grand Canyon University. With DACA, she is also able to teach.
After Tuesday’s announcement, Montoya stood outside ICE’s Phoenix headquarters, where she had protested, rallied and chanted for migrant rights many times before. Hugging her friends, she thought about when she first came out as undocumented in 2010.
“At that time, my biggest inspiration was my little brother,” she said, her voice shaking.
Then, he was a child. Today, he is a DACA recipient studying at ASU.
“For seven years, I worked so hard to ensure that children like him didn’t have to go through the struggles and the obstacles we had to face,” she said. “The reality is that today we had a government that — after a lot of years, a lot of young people getting deported, a lot of families getting separated — decided to break the promise.”
Montoya worried there could be DACA-enabled deportations in Arizona and across the country.
“Now they have our records, and we don’t know if they’re going to come in the morning (or) to pick us up in the middle of the night ... to send us to a country that we haven’t been living in for many years,” she said.
Montoya’s father is seeking immigration status through an asylum application, she said.
Thomas Kim
Phoenix resident Thomas Kim, 25, said he came to the U.S. legally with his family 12 years ago from South Korea. He said they lost legal status after an unscrupulous immigration attorney botched their case.
Kim decided to stay in the U.S. to become a lawyer and “help friends that were in the same situation as my family,” he said. He applied for DACA in 2012.
“I was absolutely grateful when I got DACA status,” he said Tuesday. “I felt like I belonged to this country. It meant I was able to drive on the highway without the fear of getting deported. It meant I was able to be employed. It meant I was able to get a college degree and pursue something greater.”
Kim is finishing his last year of law school and works at a public defender’s office in Phoenix. The Tuesday announcement cast a shadow of uncertainty over his career, as he’d recently been in talks with a Portland, Oregon, law firm about a job.
Because Kim’s work permit is good through mid-October 2018, he said he would “stay hopeful and work hard” so he doesn’t lose his shot at that position.
“It breaks my heart to think about the 800,000 other recipients who are in my shoes,” Kim said. “I know their desire to make this country better, to call the United States their home. I watched them become attorneys, nurses, and overcome their obstacles in their way. My heart breaks for them.”
Francisco Luna
Francisco Luna wore a black T-shirt, splashed with three words in pink, white and blue, to watch Tuesday’s announcement: “Trans Queer Pueblo.” That’s the name of the organization he advocates with on behalf of LGBT migrants of color.
Luna was 11 when he came from Mexico to Arizona with his family. DACA allowed him to work, buy a car and help take care of his relatives. He said he has filed and paid taxes for several years now.
Luna, 27, said he had been on edge, “waiting, waiting, waiting,” since Trump was elected, fearful for his migrant and LGBT communities.
“There’s a lot of emotions because, like me and many others, there’s folks
that have hopes and families to provide for,” he said, starting to cry. “They were already achieving their dreams ... and unfortunately, right now it’s a toll on them, because in six months, where is it going to leave us? What’s going to happen?”
Trans Queer Pueblo was one of several Arizona organizations that came together Tuesday — despite sometimes-deep philosophical differences on how best to fight for migrant rights — to comfort one another.
When Sessions referred to DACA recipients as “illegal aliens” — a once-common term that is considered outdated and offensive — during his announcement, many of them shook their heads. Luna said the attorney general’s language wasn’t a surprise, but it was a wake-up call.
“It was a lot of ignorance, a lot of hatred and a lot of messaging for white nationalists to continue to hate our community,” he said.
Julio Zuñiga
Julio Zuñiga, 27, was 5 when he came from Mexico to Arizona with his parents in 1996. He has been a DACA recipient since 2013.
“After Sessions’ announcement, I feel a lot of anger and a lot of sadness all mixed in together,” he said Tuesday morning. His gray T-shirt said, “La lucha sigue,” or “The fight continues.”
DACA allowed Zuñiga to begin working as a mortgage loan officer, and he has paid more than $10,000 in taxes over the course of his career, he said.
In two months, he will be a dad. His main concern is that if broader immigration reform isn’t passed in Congress, he won’t have a way to provide for his family.
“I’m pissed off at the Republicans, at Trump, at Sessions,” he said. “Most of all, I’m pissed off at the Democrats. They did not pass anything when they owned the House, the Senate and the presidency.”
Zuñiga warned that Trump has underestimated the strength of dreamers, their parents and their loved ones.
“We’re coming,” he said. “We’re going to get ready to fight.”
Daniel Rodriguez
Immigration attorney Daniel Rodriguez, 31, had DACA status until he became a legal resident in 2015.
“I had started law school in 2008 but had taken a break from 2009 to 2012 because I couldn’t afford the out-of-state tuition rate,” Rodriguez said. “During that time, I was pushing for the DACA program. So when it was announced, it was huge for me on two fronts: being able to see the fruit of a two-year campaign, and having the opportunity to personally have this protection.”
Since then, he has established a thriving law practice in Phoenix.
Rodriguez said the Trump administration’s decision to rescind DACA wasn’t surprising, but he found the delivery of the announcement “disgusting.”
“There was a general feeling of glee by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in announcing the end of a program that has benefited 800,000 people directly and millions indirectly,” he said. “That definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.
“And then for him to say, ‘We’re doing this to uphold the rule of law.’ You can’t say that when the administration has just pardoned Joe Arpaio,” he said of the former Maricopa County sheriff whose department was found to have racially profiled Latinos.
As of Tuesday morning, Rodriguez had already begun answering numerous DACA-repeal questions on his socialmedia accounts. He planned to host a forum to address more concerns, he said.
“Attorneys need to be more than attorneys right now. They need to be advocates,” Rodriguez said. “We need a movement composed of bold individuals . ... What I’ve been telling people is, there’s no way in hell I’m going to let this administration redefine America from the country of the Statue of Liberty to the country of the wall.”
Carla Chavarria
Phoenix resident Carla Chavarria, 24, has DACA status until November.
She applied for a twoyear renewal before Tuesday’s announcement, she said, and is waiting to see whether it will be approved.
Chavarria said she always saw DACA as a “Band-Aid” rather than a lasting solution.
“It brought about a sense of relief in some ways, because I was able to get a state ID, and I was able to not live in fear of deportation,” she said. “But a bigger part of me knew it could be taken away at any time.”
DACA allowed Chavarria to start her own digital-marketing business. She also launched activewear line Ganaz with fellow dreamer Máxima Guerrero last year.
Chavarria said Tuesday that she is ready to see the community “fight for something more permanent.”
“I don’t know the strategy yet. I don’t know the details,” she said.
“But one thing I do know is that we need to be united. I think it’s time for all of the community to come together and fight for something we can hopefully have more control over.”
Abril Gallardo
Dreamer Abril Gallardo, 27, came to the U.S. from Mexico at age 12. DACA provided an opportunity to work and go to college, she said.
“I was able to enroll back to school full time because I was able to pay in-state tuition,” she said. “I also got myself a car, and I took my family for the first family vacation to California.”
Gallardo said the program “was sort of a key that allowed (her and her sibling) to open other doors that were closed.”
“They can take DACA away,” she said, tearing up. “(But) they can’t take the skills. They can’t take the experiences we lived. They can’t take the power of our community.”
Gallardo said she would “continue to fight because true liberation is not just about certain people.
“True liberation is when all of our community, all people of color, are not oppressed. And that’s a long fight.”
Maria Cruz Ramirez
Maria Cruz Ramirez, a mother of three DACA recipients who does not have legal status, tried to comfort the young immigrants directly affected by Tuesday’s announcement.
She wore a black Tshirt saying, “I have a dream. What’s yours?” from a 2011 student movement pushing for the Dream Act.
Cruz Ramirez, 51, said Sessions’ words were “humiliating.”
“He is affecting their mood with those bad comments,” she said. “He is putting down everyone . ... That’s having no compassion for those who come to this country to work hard. They’ve paid taxes and uplifted the economy of this country.”
Fighting tears, she said her son recently bought a home.
Without DACA, it’s uncertain whether he’ll be able to keep it.
“His dreams are just beginning, and in one moment, they can just be slashed,” Cruz Ramirez said.
Isabel O’Neal
Isabel O’Neal, the mother of prominent DACA activist Belen Sisa, said Tuesday’s news left her and her family uncertain about the future.
DACA allowed Sisa to enroll at ASU. She wants to become a lawyer.
“It’s very sad. It’s an injustice,” O’Neal said while marching with a group of about 80 people to the ICE office in Phoenix.
O’Neal, 50, called Sessions’ speech xenophobic.
“People who grew up here, went to school here, are in law school, medical school, pay taxes ... you don’t consider them Americans?” she said. “They are not ‘aliens.’ ”
“This is the only country they know. They make this country better,” she added.