Is DACA good enough?
Citizenship for All Rally at Washington D.C. in 2021. Photo courtesy of Eva Santos Veloz, United We Dream
While the fate of DACA is in the hands of federal courts, many beneficiaries crave the stability the program doesn’t offer them
Editor’s note: This story was originally published by Documented. The outlet based in New York conducted a survey with over 100 Dreamers who say they still don’t feel stable in the United States. palabra explored some of these issues and the concept of citizenship in a piece by Eileen Truax last August.
Brian Aguilar Avila, a 27-year-old from Argentina who works as a neural engineering laboratory administrator at The City College of New York (CCNY), feels a familiar uncertainty knowing that the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program could be decided in the courts next month.
He found himself in this situation five years ago when, as he left his doctor’s office on the sunny afternoon of Sept. 5, 2017, his phone vibrated while a notification flashed across the screen: then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had rescinded DACA. The program had given Aguilar Avila the opportunity to work legally, obtain a social security number, and travel abroad using advance parole (AP). Now, his ability to work legally in the U.S. was in jeopardy. And he can’t exhale yet.
The DACA program was announced by the former President Barack Obama’s administration on June 15, 2012, and implemented through an executive order a month later, with the goal of providing protection from deportation to children who were brought to the U.S. and lived here without documentation. More than 690,000 beneficiaries have since applied. Three years after Sessions rescinded DACA, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Dreamers stating that former President Donald Trump’s administration did not have a detailed justification for canceling DACA.
However, the program could still be overturned in the courts next month, as seven states are making the case that the Obama administration did not have the authority to implement DACA. A hearing is scheduled for July 6th, at the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
While DACA has improved the lives of its beneficiaries, who are known as “Dreamers,” the uncertainty surrounding the program has impacted the mental health of those who anxiously wait for a permanent solution.
In a survey conducted by Documented, over 100 Dreamers said that they, like Aguilar Avila, are living in a state of anxiety and uncertainty due to the program’s volatility. More than 93% of 89 active DACA recipients who responded to the question said that their mental health had been negatively impacted by the instability of the program, with 33% reporting that they had sought therapy. Aside from preventing Dreamers’ from planning their careers, lives, and relationships beyond the two-year expiration date, the program’s limitation has also affected the well-being of their family members.
“It’s as if we are hanging by a thread,” Aguilar Avila said.
Brian Aguilar Avila during a trip to Argentina to visit the resting grounds of his grandmother. Photo courtesy Brian Aguilar Avila
Aguilar Avila, who lives in Yonkers, N.Y., has been a beneficiary of the program since 2012. After he graduated high school as the valedictorian of his class in 2013, he applied to city and state public schools, as well as private schools around the country. Because at the time, DACA students were considered international students, private colleges were out of his reach due to tuition costs. The process made him feel oppressed by the immigration system. Regardless, he obtained his B.E. in biomedical engineering from CCNY in 2017, graduated with a M.S.Ed in higher education administration from Baruch College in 2021, and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in urban education from The City University of New York Graduate Center.
But even if he didn’t have all of these accomplishments, “I am an American,” Aguilar Avila said. “Sure, my heritage is from Argentina, but I know nothing of Argentina. I know everything about the U.S. I learned history in the U.S. It doesn’t make sense that I will not have a green card by the time I am 30. I don’t fit in here because the U.S. is not accepting me. So where do I belong? I am de-facto stateless.”
He added, “Having to renew DACA is always at the back of my mind… but I don’t know what is going to happen in the next few months.”
In April 2017, a study published in The Lancet Public Health journal surveyed 14,973 non-citizen, Hispanic adults aged 19–50 years, of whom 3,972 were eligible for DACA, and found that the rates of moderate or severe psychological distress in the DACA-eligible group had dropped by 40% after the program had been implemented. However, after the program was terminated, another study showed that stress levels among DACA recipients had increased, and that “40.7% met the clinical cutoff for distress from the potentially traumatic event (PTE) indicative of posttraumatic stress disorder” resulting from the uncertainty of the future of DACA.
‘It’s as if you have to prove every two years why you deserve to be here’
The uncertainty of the program not only affects the individual’s mental health, but also the well-being of other family members, says Eva Santos Veloz, 32, an organizer with the immigrant youth-led nonprofit United We Dream, who is also a Dreamer and has three children aged 5, 11, and 13.
Santos Veloz arrived in the states from the Dominican Republic at the age of 3 and grew up in the Bronx. She applied for the DACA program in 2014. At that time, she was living with her children in a shelter and DACA became her way out of homelessness.
However, she says, the two-year time frame of the program has caused her to lose three jobs, including a position as a relationship banker, because of renewal processing delays. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had taken eight months to process her renewal, which on average takes five months.
Eva Santos Veloz at a rally for citizenship last year. Photo courtesy of Eva Santos Veloz, United We Dream
“The bank would send you an email 180 days prior to the expiration date of your Employment Authorization Document (EAD), and then again in 100 days, and then in 50 days — that is a lot of pressure for a person’s mental health,” Santos Veloz explained. “Imagine going to work and basically seeing a time clock on your future.”
As Santos Veloz waited for her permit to arrive, the economic impact was felt at home. “It was really sad for me and my kids, because there is nothing you can do about it,” she added, regarding losing her employment. “It’s as if you have to prove every two years why you deserve to be here.”
When the grandfather of her children passed away suddenly during a trip to the Dominican Republic, Santos Veloz said the kids wanted to attend his funeral. Because of her immigration status, she could not travel out of the country without advance parole. “That affected them very much because they weren’t able to understand why. And they weren’t able to say their goodbyes… I know so many children are affected day to day by the same experiences. It’s just not my story. My story is one of a million stories,” she said.
Santos Veloz added that her children, mother and siblings who have green cards or are citizens, have avoided visiting family in the Dominican Republic because they don’t want to travel without her. “It makes me feel guilty,” she said.
Limitations of Advance Parole
DACA recipients can only travel for humanitarian, educational or work-related reasons and must apply for advance parole. Aguilar Avila had to apply for the travel document in January, when his grandmother, who he had not seen for more than two decades, passed away in Argentina.
“I had some nostalgia of the things I remembered… and I was emotional, but I was also sad, very sad, because I did not want to go there under those circumstances. My grandma had wanted to see me when she was in the hospital bed… And it hurt,” he said, recalling his grandmother had cried on the phone when she spoke with him a few days before she passed.
He added that “it hurt more that I had to go (Federal Plaza)” to the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, where he had to apply for advance parole. The agents made him feel like a “prisoner.” “Like come on dude, I am paying to go to Argentina to pay my respects,” he said, explaining his AP was initially denied when personnel mistakenly said he didn’t qualify because he did not bring his original passport, further delaying his departure.
AP stamp from Brian Aguilar Avila’s passport. Photo courtesy, Brian Aguilar Avila
Jessica Smith Bobadilla, a U.S.-based immigration and human rights attorney who has been practicing law for two decades, says that the advance parole process can be very cumbersome. She represented long-distance runner Luis Miguel Grijalva Morales, a Dreamer from Guatemala who competed in the Tokyo Olympics last year, and recalls that they had a very short time frame to apply for the traveling permit due to how the qualification works. She remembers being “glued” to her phone to ensure that she would not miss the calls from the USCIS agents processing the application.
“During that time we had to go through lengths that would be impossible for DACA recipients who are not represented, or, even if they were represented, may not have the same outcome,” she says, explaining that Grijalva Morales had to, after being approved, rush to a COVID testing facility to get results so that he could depart a few days later.
“One of the things that I recommended was that the administration consider if DACA holders, during the renewal process, could justify reasons for travel under the scheme (of advance parole), that a travel option be available with certain conditions attached to it…. And also that the applicant would still have to meet the criteria if asked by a CBP officer… as to what the nature of their trip has been,” Smith Bobadilla said.
Allan Wernick, director and attorney-in-charge at CUNY Citizenship Now, an initiative that has helped more than 2,000 Dreamers with applications and renewals in New York, told Documented that “the program could have been structured so that advance parole was automatic rather than discretionary,” and that “it could be done by administrative guidance.” Wernick also cited that a program like advance parole is routine in a program like TPS, but not in DACA.
In the upcoming court hearing scheduled for July 6, seven states will argue that DACA has been a financial burden to them and that it undermines the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which outlines who can be removed and who can obtain the benefits awarded by the DACA program. President Joe Biden’s administration will argue that DACA was a "straightforward exercise" of the federal authority to administer and enforce immigration. Wernick said that the only way for DACA to be protected and permanent would be through legislation, given that the executive orders are more likely to be challenged by future administrations, as was the case during the Trump years.
“I am still upset that (DACA) hangs on a thread. They always say they have a plan, that Congress has a plan, and that Trump had a plan, but it always dies. There’s no one who cares…I want people to know that I am in this situation and I am stuck,” Aguilar Avila said.
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Rommel H. Ojeda is a bilingual journalist and filmmaker based in NYC. He is the community correspondent for Documented. His work focuses on immigration and issues affecting Latinx communities in New York.