In southeast Wisconsin and across the country, America’s so-called “Dreamers” are sitting down with their families and discussing worst-case scenarios.
If you’re deported, the young adults ask their parents, who would take care of my younger siblings? If I lose my work permit and have to return to a country I haven’t seen since childhood, where would I go?
They have benefited from DACA — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — which protects from deportation immigrants who came to the country as children, and also provides them with a work permit. The idea behind the program is that the child didn’t make a choice to enter the country illegally, likely has little to no tie to their native land, and should be granted special relief.
Dreamers and their families have never enjoyed much certainty about their future. The program has been embroiled in legal challenges for much of its 14-year existence.
But Donald Trump’s election, after campaign promises of mass deportation, sealing the border and ending DACA, has brought a new sense of urgency — and fear.
“It feels more real this time,” said registered nurse Yareli Suarez, 23. “Now we really have to think about any possible outcome.”
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Suarez, a DACA recipient who has lived in Milwaukee since she was 4 years old, is considering what could happen if her undocumented parents were deported. She can’t imagine her three younger siblings moving to Mexico, where she was born. They don’t speak Spanish and are U.S. citizens. American life, she said, “is all they know.”
Her parents, who fled gang violence and and poverty in their town, now work in a factory. When he first arrived in the U.S., her father did backbreaking work on farms and in slaughterhouses.
Suarez had hoped to return to school to be able to teach nursing. But DACA’s uncertain fate means she and other DACA recipients don’t know if they will be allowed to work once their current two-year work permits expire. Some immigration lawyers are urging DACA recipients to renew their status right away if it expires any time in 2025.
“I had so many goals, and I had this vision of how I wanted to advance my career,” Suarez said. “It all kind of feels like it’s on hold because I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
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Ending DACA is part of Trump administration’s immigration plan
For now, DACA allows about 530,000 young adults who came to the U.S. as children to stay and work here.
Legal rulings from previous years mean DACA isn’t accepting new applicants, but current recipients are unaffected, for now. Still, the Obama-era program was intended as a temporary solution, and there are no direct paths to permanent legal residency or citizenship for recipients. Advocates have urged Congress to pass a law codifying protections for these young people.
With Trump coming in, and Republicans holding both houses of Congress, that is unlikely. Stephen Miller, who is set to be Trump’s homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff, has said the administration will again try to end DACA. Miller is an immigration hardliner who is a proponent of several policies that met legal challenges during Trump’s last administration.
Further, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments last month in a lawsuit over DACA, though the judges have not yet ruled. If the program is struck down and the case is appealed to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration is not expected to defend it.
Young immigrant adults express fear post-election, lay some blame on Democrats
For 23-year-old Mario Rubio, who immigrated to Madison in 2006 and now lives in Milwaukee, DACA gave him the chance to get a driver’s license. And it now allows him to work legally for a south-side neighborhood nonprofit.
Still, having to repeatedly renew his DACA status is “both time consuming and financially consuming,” Rubio said. It costs at least $555 every two years to renew. He didn’t see much hope for the program’s survival in the coming years.
Both Republican and Democratic administrations have disappointed Rubio.
He noted that during the George W. Bush administration, he and his brothers were placed in a jail cell as children when they were caught crossing the border. But he also expressed dismay at Barack Obama’s high deportation numbers.
And for all the fear and uncertainty about what is to come, Suarez said, Democrats should have done a better job advocating for immigrants. DACA recipients, he said, felt like bargaining chips in a fraught political debate.
More:GOP Sen. Ron Johnson draws contrast with Donald Trump, calls mass deportation unrealistic
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Rubio and Suarez are part of a local advocacy group for young adults called Comité Sin Fronteras, or “Committee without Borders,” which is part of the Milwaukee immigrant rights organization Voces de la Frontera. Group members gathered after the election to process their thoughts and emotions aloud.
“A lot of people have reached their breaking points, and they’re trying to find community,” Rubio said.
Facing uncertain futures, DACA recipients double down on activism
Still, the young adults who gathered came to a conclusion.
“We’re tired of fighting, but we’re also not going to give up,” said Fernanda Jimenez, 24, of Racine. “We know that there’s too much to give up.”
Jimenez, a grant writer and the lead organizer of the Comité Sin Fronteras, wants to help not just DACA recipients, but those with no protection from deportation: undocumented parents and relatives, plus people who came of age after the window to apply for DACA closed.
Jimenez got in just under the wire. She applied in 2016 when she was 15 years old, shortly before Trump took office the first time. She has friends who turned 15 later and never got the chance to apply.
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Groups like the Comité are pledging to prepare immigrants for what’s ahead. That means offering resources, but also speaking out publicly on the issue. They’re working to organize rallies and other events as Trump transitions to power.
Jimenez said she’s heard some people are thinking about choosing to leave the country, to get out before they are forced. Many others are thinking about how to respond in the event of a mass deportation sweep.
She’s been clear with her family, she said. She doesn’t want to leave the U.S., and she doesn’t want them to leave either. They should not give up on the country where they’ve spent most of their lives, Jimenez told them.
“We’ve provided our labor, our culture, everything to this country,” she said.
How the next four years will play out is uncertain. And how much success advocates will have in keeping DACA in place, or stopping families from being separated by deportation, remains to be seen.
Jimenez is ready to do what she can.
“We won’t leave without a fight,” she said.
Sophie Carson is a general assignment reporter who reports on religion and faith, immigrants and refugees and more. Contact her at scarson@gannett.com or 920-323-5758.
This story was updated to add a video.
