"They gave me wings and now they’re gonna cut them off": 10 Dreamers consider what they’ll do if DACA ends
The five-year-old DACA program has allowed nearly one million young undocumented immigrants to live without fear of deportation. They’ve stepped out of the shadows to work and study, start their own businesses, and access healthcare and bank accounts. Here, in their own words, 10 Dreamers consider the unthinkable: what they’ll do if Trump ends the program.
When President Barack Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program in June 2012, the lives of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants changed overnight.
Brought to the U.S. as children, they had grown up undocumented, unable to access the things that most Americans take for granted, like a driver’s license, financial aid or a job. Many had arrived to the United States before they even registered their first memories of their birth countries, and for years were not aware they were undocumented. Many discovered that fact only when they went to get a license or apply for college.
Five years after DACA began, nearly 800,000 Dreamers are benefitting from the program, living as doctors, teachers, truck drivers, students, bankers, chefs. They’re buying homes and raising children, without worrying about deportation.
But DACA is under threat, with rumors that President Trump may end the program as soon as this week. A group of Republican officials has pledged to sue the federal government if Trump doesn’t end DACA by Sept. 5.
As they await a decision, 10 Dreamers tell Univision what they would do if DACA ends.
