Juan Gonzalez Martinez


Detroit, MI




My name is Juan Gonzalez Martinez. I was born in Mexico. I came to America at the age of 1, but my story began a little before I was actually born, it began with my parents. My father started working at the age of 8, my mother at the age of 10, and they were 21 when they had their first child, my older sister, Luz Adriana. But my dad was still in poverty after working 12 plus years, since his childhood so he decided to try to get a work visa and move to the States. He got the visa and moved to America, but that meant he was away from my mom and my newborn sister. He saw her for the first time when she was 4 years old when he was able to come back to visit, and that’s when I was born too. Upon getting his visa renewed, his father, my grandfather, told him, "Hey, you can't leave your family like this, you can't live in these lapses, where you see your children every four years when you renew your visa". So he made the decision, it was either stay in Mexico or bring his family to America with him, and he made the decision of bringing us to America.

That being said - we came, my sister was five and I was one, and we crossed the border with some other people. We were in California for about a week without our parents, without any relatives, a number of things could have happened to us. Luckily it didn't, we were reunited with my mother and then promptly with our father in Detroit, Michigan.

I grew up here. I went to public schools here in Southwest Detroit. I grew up with all kinds of my friends from all different types of communities. And my parents told me as a kid, never tell people where you came from. And as a kid, you ask a lot of questions, "Well why?”  Especially me, I was a very inquisitive child, so I would ask them a lot of questions and they would just answer the best they could, but they let me know with urgency that I couldn't tell people where I was from. So I carried that with me throughout my life.

The undocumented status didn't really impact me until I was in high school when I tried to get my first job, tried getting a driver's license, anything that a normal fifteen, sixteen year old growing up in America would do. A lot of my friends were doing it, so when I went to get a license and they told me what I needed, I was like, well I can't get a license, that's for sure.

So I tried to get a job and it seemed like there are plenty of places out there that wanted to hire people. I was looking at every restaurant and filling out all kinds of applications, and a couple of people called me back. But they always said, "Hey, bring back your social security card.” There was one restaurant that desperately needed a dishwasher. They told me "When can you start?" and I said, "Right now if you need me.”  So I went home and changed, I and worked that whole night. They loved my work ethic. It was only one day, but they seen that I just wanted to work, that I just wanted to be able to take my friends to the movies, be able to buy things like kids in high school would do, live a normal life. But on my second day they asked me for my social security card. Reason being, they had been raided by ICE the prior year. So, I told them the truth. My parents told me whenever confronted with the option of lying or telling the truth, it's better to go for the truth, so I told them the truth. And they had to let me go, they had no other option. I drove home in tears that day. I was frustrated, because it was the first time in my life that I seen the kind of impact that this would have on me.

At that point, I didn't think I'd be able to go to college, just because I've seen that I couldn't even get a job. My grades in high school, before realizing this, were pretty good. After this moment, I wouldn't say they dropped, but I wasn't achieving my potential just because I knew I had these barriers  in my future that will nullify any advances that I made.

But I always looked for a way out of the situation. I tried to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces, in the Marines. I talked to a recruiter and he told me, "You can serve and probably get deployed. We can send you to Afghanistan, to Iraq, any one of the various wars we are fighting right now, and you can even die for this country, but you would come back, there's no guarantee that we could give you a path to citizenship or any kind of legal status, there's just no way that we could provide that for you.” I appreciated the honesty, but I was pretty heartbroken, just because this was my home that I wanted to serve. I wanted to show people that this was my home.

I've always felt like an outsider everywhere I go, but I grew up here, people around me were my family and my friends and no one can take that away from me. So I kept going through school, just in the shadows, not telling anybody my true story, head down, just doing the best I can to get by.

My senior year was when something clicked. I was playing soccer since I was a child. And my senior year I had a couple of offers from different schools to play soccer. They were smaller schools, D2, D3 kind of stuff. And they were telling me, "Hey, wanna come play soccer? We can give you a soccer scholarship.” And that's when I noticed that maybe I can go to college. Maybe there is an avenue. So I started picking up my grades, working really hard at getting better at soccer and I was able to get a scholarship to Lawrence State University. I originally wanted to become an environmental scientist and that dream was shot down pretty quickly just because Lawrence State was really expensive school. They provided me with a lot of help, but without any type of financial aid, any type of loans, we weren't able to afford the tuition. My parents maybe could have paid for it out of pocket, but after me there's four other brothers and sisters that I have. So I can't deny them opportunity just for me to go to school. So I ended up going to a different school. I played a little bit of soccer there. I was going part time, working, doing the best I could. And I knew that the road was gonna be long, but it didn't matter really, I wanted to get it done, I needed to get it done.
And then the DACA announcement came along from President Obama. I heard plenty of times growing up, "Hey, this is gonna be the year they are gonna pass something, this is going to be the year we are going to be able to come out of the shadows, a light is gonna shine on us." And every year was the same thing. The Dream Act had just failed in congress. So when I heard that Obama had done something, I didn't pay much attention to it until, I mean, my phone was blowing up with all my friends when they heard about it. And they told me, "Hey did you hear what happened?" I said, "Probably just rumors or promises that are gonna be broken at one point." But it was the real deal, I was gonna be able to get a work permit and get a license, it changed my life. It put me in the position that I am in now.

So in 2013 I got my status and immediately I put it to use, I started working for State Farm, kept going to school part time. I switched around various jobs after State Farm, went to work for GM, still going to school. And then I had a buddy who was working at Quicken Loans and he gave me a call and said, "Hey do you wanna come work here?" That was the downside of that was - I couldn’t go to to school anymore, but it was a great opportunity to learn a lot about many different aspects of business and just a great chance that they had given me. So I took the job and I’ve been working for Quicken Loans for four years now. Since then I re-enrolled in school again, I’m able to work and study and help my family.

So yes, DACA changed my life for the better. It made possible to come out from the shadows, get a license, get a job, help my family. Then the presidential election of 2016 came along. And the current president, Trump, won. And immediately, I knew it was going to have an impact, that very night. I knew at one point, he was going to start attacking our communities. And it was evident, almost within a couple of days, I believe, that this happened with the Muslim ban. And I may not be Muslim or an Arab, but I felt their pain, just because I grew up around those types of communities, people from Yemen and that part of the world. It really shook me, the fact that the effects were felt immediately. He wanted to ban people just because they were of a certain religion, from a certain part of the world. It impacted me.

And the moment it was shot down in court, that's when I realized what I wanted to do in life. I wanted to fight for justice in the judicial branch. You can hold a president accountable, or any other branch of government accountable, that's what I wanted to do. So the next day I went to apply at Wayne State University/ Them I made plans to get everything in order, because I wanted to go full time at my job. So I moved around my work hours the best I could, I had to cut back a little bit.

But now I am enrolled full time at Wayne University, work full time. And my plan is to become an immigration lawyer within the next couple years. My DACA expires in October. And with the announcement in September 5th of last year, it really caused an issue.  It closed a lot of doors, because at that moment, DACA was still in effect. But with that announcement, it pretty much put me in limbo, an expiration date on my life, on my status, on my ability to work, and I didn't know what to do. I was full of anxiety, of fear, with so many questions. But I kept my head down and just kept grinding, kept working.

My plan was to graduate, to do three years of school in two years, and start law school next year. Luckily there was an injunction through the courts that allowed me to renew, so that'll give me another two years. And I can take my time with school, for my own health, just to make sure I am covering all my bases, taking care of what I had to take care of. I mean, I talked to all kinds of law students and they told me the best thing is to take your time, not to rush anything.

One negative side of DACA - it really affected our complacency. A lot of people relaxed and stopped pushing. They had DACA, they had work permits. They were able to get licenses, get jobs, they didn't feel the need to push any further. I think that was a mistake. We should have kept pressing, just because, this is only temporary and only helps a small percentage of undocumented people. Look what happens now. So many people are in peril. There are DACA recipients that have been deported already. We just have to keep fighting. We can't let other people tell us our story or tell us where we come from. These communities, and it's not just the Mexican community, I know a large number of DACA recipients and Dreamers are Mexican, but they are from all over the world. I have close activist friends from Poland that are DACA recipients, there are people from Central and South America, from Africa, from Europe, from all over the world.

So it's not just a Mexican issue or a Latino issue, it's an immigrant issue for 11 million people. And when we talk about a number, maybe the stories or the effect is diluted, but I mean each story is very similar and very unique. They are human stories. They are people. We shouldn't be talking about people just in terms of raw numbers. 11 million people is 11 million families, 11 million different lives that are gonna be affected directly by all this. We’re not asking for pity, we’re asking for humane justice.


I've always felt like an outsider everywhere I go, but I grew up here, people around me were my family and my friends and no one can take that away from me. So I kept going through school, just in the shadows, not telling anybody my true story, head down, just doing the best I can to get by.

My senior year was when something clicked. I was playing soccer since I was a child. And my senior year I had a couple of offers from different schools to play soccer. They were smaller schools, D2, D3 kind of stuff. And they were telling me, "Hey, wanna come play soccer? We can give you a soccer scholarship.” And that's when I noticed that maybe I can go to college. Maybe there is an avenue.
So I started picking up my grades, working really hard at getting better at soccer and I was able to get a scholarship to Lawrence State University.
I originally wanted to become an environmental scientist and that dream was shot down pretty quickly just because Lawrence State was really expensive school. They provided me with a lot of help, but without any type of financial aid, any type of loans, we weren't able to afford the tuition. My parents maybe could have paid for it out of pocket, but after me there's four other brothers and sisters that I have. So I can't deny them opportunity just for me to go to school. So I ended up going to a different school. I played a little bit of soccer there. I was going part time, working, doing the best I could. And I knew that the road was gonna be long, but it didn't matter really, I wanted to get it done, I needed to get it done.

And then the DACA announcement came along from President Obama. I heard plenty of times growing up, "Hey, this is gonna be the year they are gonna pass something, this is going to be the year we are going to be able to come out of the shadows, a light is gonna shine on us." And every year was the same thing. The Dream Act had just failed in congress. So when I heard that Obama had done something, I didn't pay much attention to it until, I mean, my phone was blowing up with all my friends when they heard about it. And they told me, "Hey did you hear what happened?" I said, "Probably just rumors or promises that are gonna be broken at one point." But it was the real deal, I was gonna be able to get a work permit and get a license, it changed my life. It put me in the position that I am in now.

So in 2013 I got my status and immediately I put it to use, I started working for State Farm, kept going to school part time. I switched around various jobs after State Farm, went to work for GM, still going to school. And then I had a buddy who was working at Quicken Loans and he gave me a call and said, "Hey do you wanna come work here?" That was the downside of that was - I couldn’t go to to school anymore, but it was a great opportunity to learn a lot about many different aspects of business and just a great chance that they had given me. So I took the job and I’ve been working for Quicken Loans for four years now. Since then I re-enrolled in school again, I’m able to work and study and help my family.

So yes, DACA changed my life for the better. It made possible to come out from the shadows, get a license, get a job, help my family. Then the presidential election of 2016 came along. And the current president, Trump, won. And immediately, I knew it was going to have an impact, that very night. I knew at one point, he was going to start attacking our communities. And it was evident, almost within a couple of days, I believe, that this happened with the Muslim ban. And I may not be Muslim or an Arab, but I felt their pain, just because I grew up around those types of communities, people from Yemen and that part of the world. It really shook me, the fact that the effects were felt immediately. He wanted to ban people just because they were of a certain religion, from a certain part of the world. It impacted me.

And the moment it was shot down in court, that's when I realized what I wanted to do in life. I wanted to fight for justice in the judicial branch. You can hold a president accountable, or any other branch of government accountable, that's what I wanted to do. So the next day I went to apply at Wayne State University/ Them I made plans to get everything in order, because I wanted to go full time at my job. So I moved around my work hours the best I could, I had to cut back a little bit.

But now I am enrolled full time at Wayne University, work full time. And my plan is to become an immigration lawyer within the next couple years. My DACA expires in October. And with the announcement in September 5th of last year, it really caused an issue.  It closed a lot of doors, because at that moment, DACA was still in effect. But with that announcement, it pretty much put me in limbo, an expiration date on my life, on my status, on my ability to work, and I didn't know what to do. I was full of anxiety, of fear, with so many questions. But I kept my head down and just kept grinding, kept working.

My plan was to graduate, to do three years of school in two years, and start law school next year. Luckily there was an injunction through the courts that allowed me to renew, so that'll give me another two years. And I can take my time with school, for my own health, just to make sure I am covering all my bases, taking care of what I had to take care of. I mean, I talked to all kinds of law students and they told me the best thing is to take your time, not to rush anything.

One negative side of DACA - it really affected our complacency. A lot of people relaxed and stopped pushing. They had DACA, they had work permits. They were able to get licenses, get jobs, they didn't feel the need to push any further. I think that was a mistake. We should have kept pressing, just because, this is only temporary and only helps a small percentage of undocumented people. Look what happens now. So many people are in peril. There are DACA recipients that have been deported already. We just have to keep fighting. We can't let other people tell us our story or tell us where we come from. These communities, and it's not just the Mexican community, I know a large number of DACA recipients and Dreamers are Mexican, but they are from all over the world. I have close activist friends from Poland that are DACA recipients, there are people from Central and South America, from Africa, from Europe, from all over the world.

So it's not just a Mexican issue or a Latino issue, it's an immigrant issue for 11 million people. And when we talk about a number, maybe the stories or the effect is diluted, but I mean each story is very similar and very unique. They are human stories. They are people. We shouldn't be talking about people just in terms of raw numbers. 11 million people is 11 million families, 11 million different lives that are gonna be affected directly by all this. We’re not asking for pity, we’re asking for humane justice.















Violeta Gomez

Boorklyn, NY


My name is Violeta Gomez and I was born on June 28th, 1985 in Toluca, Mexico. I was there for three years of my life with both of my parents and my brother. I was brought to New York after one of the greatest economic crises in Mexico; in the early-mid-80's. Even though, my parents were both professionals and had a business it could no longer sustain us. Some of my father's family was in New York City and we took a plane from Mexico City directly to JFK with an indefinite visa. My family’s been living in Sunset Park since the 80’s.


One of the first things I remember is actually going to Sunset Park. I was three years old and used to go to school back then at HeadStart on 45th and 4th avenue. I remember that afterschool my grandmother used to take care of me back then. She used to walk my brother and I up the hill, well it’s not really a hill, but I thought it was at the time.

I don’t remember it being difficult, I mean I had both of my parents, I had my grandmother and my brother. So, in a way, because I had everything that was known to me already, I think I more assimilated than anything else. I also went to a bilingual program and both of my parents know English, so we grew up speaking English and Spanish. I went back to Mexico for a couple of years when I was 8 years old. I did a couple of years in Junior high, then I came back and started high school here.

Because of the way I grew up, education has always been really important in my family. It was just assumed that I was going to go to college, it was just something I needed to figure out how to do. When I was 7 years old, my parents separated, and it was just my mom. We have always had that mentality, since her parents, that you just have to find a way to do things. Life is about obstacles, it’s about finding out how you are going to overcome those obstacles. Of course, you cannot do it by yourself, you have to have a community, people that help you. You just have to find a way to overcome your life because then you just don't live.




My brother’s older than me and when he finished high school he was helped to go to a community college. So, when I finished high school I went to a community college and then from there just kept finding ways of going to school. In the early-mid-2000's CUNY already had in-state tuition for undocumented students. It’s still not advertised, but it’s something that we knew and then learned more along the way. So, we just worked and went to school, it was just something that you needed to do.

I have done an Associate degree, a Bachelor’s and am currently doing a Master’s degree. I didn’t really understand how impactful it was going to be, in terms of going to college. But other than that, it’s something we always talked about. We always knew that we were undocumented, and I always say this, it’s something that's part of me. I grew up with it, I assimilated it, I was undocumented that was it. So, for me, it was not as impactful as for people that found out when they were like 20.  

We got DACA after The Dream act failed for the third or fourth time. I have lost count after 17 years. But as an active community, we were pressuring for something to happened even though at the time Obama said he couldn’t do anything we kept pressing.

After DACA came out, I applied about eight months after. I don’t think it’s what my community deserved because we’re not only young people and students. We’re also farm workers, nannies, cooks, construction workers... We’re more than just DACA, or just Dreamers as we’re called. So that’s why it took awhile for me to decide, or accept that by me applying, I was not betraying my whole undocumented community. But I decided to do it, because it has given me the opportunity to benefit my community in many ways. We were able to access things like better jobs, more “professional” jobs, health insurance. People were able to have bank accounts, apply for credit, buy homes, cars and travel more freely inside the country. Some people even outside of the country, so I think it gave us the notion that we were okay. We forgot that it was just breadcrumbs to the community, something that can be taken away at any time because it’s not law.




The percentage of people that were benefited by DACA does not compare to the 12 million that live here in this country undocumented and that are productive.

We knew when Donald Trump started campaigning, dealing with DACA was one of his biggest promises of the campaign. So, it was not a surprise. I personally think Donald Trump plays a lot with people’s emotion and a lot with their comfortability; making people believe that he’s not going to do XYZ. Then when people are like, oh he’s not going to do this or that, it was just campaign words, he does it.  I think DACA is one of those things, because he had said many times “I support Dreamers, I love Dreamers, we’re going to support them” and then he killed the program.

I think it’s gonna take a while more before it comes to a real solution. I think it’s being used as a bargaining chip in some sense, it’s politics.

I currently work for an agency that does direct outreach services for the most vulnerable population in New York city; tenants that are being evicted, people that need health insurance or connections to food benefits, cash assistance or rental assistance. Just spreading the word that these services are for everybody regardless of immigration status. I do a lot of work in terms of motivating and teaching or sharing my experiences with other undocumented students on how to go to college, also first-generation students. Because sometimes if you are the first one, even if you have documents and you were born here, you don’t know exactly how to go to college, right? I do a lot of one on one mentorship with younger kids, I am very politically involved locally here in my neighbourhood. I am apart of a group at CUNY that also shares information for undocumented DACA recipients.














 Mouhammed Kaba

 the Bronx, New York








My name is Mouhammed Kaba, I was born in Bouake, Ivory Coast. I had a happy childhood growing up in a big house with all of my family; my aunties, my uncles, my grandmother and grandfather and my many cousins.  It was a beautiful experience.

My mom was never able to get an education, being a woman in Ivory Coast, and was a hair braider. My dad was a professor, but he still felt like the opportunities provided to him in Ivory Coast were not enough and decided to come to U.S. when I was just a toddler. After coming here though, he realized that his degree was not transferrable and he went on to become a taxi driver. In the following year my mom was able to come, then all my siblings who later became U.S. citizens. My parents were trying to have me come as well, but we faced some unfortunate circumstances. We were swindled by some people and they took our money without providing the services, it was either embassy staff or someone else I don’t know, but I wasn’t able to join my parents and my siblings for a while.

I still lived happily with my grandma Aissetou Cisse, and I remember growing up in this big compound playing with my cousins. My grandma gave me the nickname, “My American Boy”, probably because we were trying to get me to America. And it caught on. All my cousins and kids at school were calling me that. I didn’t even know what America was.

Finally after 5 years, I was able to join my family here in the U.S. My grandma knew a woman who was able to help with obtaining documents and getting me to the States. It was tough as I was very attached to my grandmother and spent my whole childhood with her. I wanted to see my parents of course, but I knew even then that it would be the last time I’d see my grandmother. I owe everything to her, and only because of her sacrifice was I able to leave Ivory Coast.

So on November 17, 1997 I landed in JFK and I remember seeing snow for the first time in my life. And first thing I did getting out from the airport: I opened my mouth to try and catch snowflakes. Here I was, American Boy in America.

When I was 8 my parents registered me at the local school, P.S. 107, and if I remember correctly I was the only African kid at the school. Nobody really knew how to deal with me, a kid coming from a different country not speaking any English, not understanding the culture and just how things work. I think it was as confusing for them as it was for me.

For example, I was taught when I was growing up that you have to be quiet and listen when your elders are speaking to you. So when my teachers were talking to me I would put my head down, wouldn’t look them in the eyes and listen, thinking that I was being respectful. And they probably just thought “What the hell is wrong with this kid?” They must have thought I was just rude.

But the language aspect was the most difficult. People would speak to me in English, I’d speak to them in French and we’d be just standing there scratching our heads. But I got over it. Funny thing was it wasn’t ESL classes, it was the Looney Tunes that helped me learn the language. I became such a huge fan of Looney Tunes, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, all of those guys, and after two or three months of watching it I started catching up.

I went to Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx. As the time was coming for me to decide which college I would apply for, I was called to talk to a counselor. It was a lady, and she asked me what my Social Security number was. I thought to myself “What the hell is Social Security and what does it have to do with my college?” But I said that I would ask my mom. So I went to my mom and she said “Oh yes, I have it somewhere.” After two days of avoiding me she finally told me, “You have no papers.”
I was very upset. You know, growing up here with all my peers, predominantly African-Americans and Latinos, I never felt any lesser than them, no one ever asked me for documentation, I never thought about it. I always just assumed I was an American from Ivory Coast.

I went back to my councilor and told her my situation. We started looking for a way to apply to a school to further my education, but I realized my opportunities were very limited. That experience was tormenting. But as I was learning more about immigration laws and how difficult things can get, how much pressure it can put on you I started understanding why my mom kept it from me all my life. She didn’t want me to be discouraged and give up on my dreams, she didn’t want me to think that because of my status I should not aim higher. That my status doesn’t define me and who I am. What will define me are my values, my dreams and my aspirations.  I started accepting who I was, being undocumented, being Black and being Muslim. After coming to that realization my life has changed and I started working towards my dreams with the tools I had.


I channeled my struggles into positive thinking and I ended up going to Nassau Community College for two years. In the Nassau Community College I joined Nassau Political Science Club. I was working at a car-wash, I struggled but I was motivated, remembering how much my grandmother and my parents sacrificed for me to be here. I was determined.

Then I took a year off to get my thoughts together and work on repaying my student debts. I realized that I like history a lot and decided continue my education. I transferred to Lehman College right around that time DACA came around.  At first I was hesitant to apply for the program, I wasn’t fully supportive of it. I was hoping the Dream Act that was introduced in 2010 would pass, but it fell short by couple of votes. So I finally decided to apply for DACA.

After that I was able to get a work permit, I picked up a job at a restaurant. I was also tutoring children, and a mom of a kid I was tutoring said I should apply for a job at the Department of Education. I did. I started working as a teacher’s assistant and then after graduation, a teacher.

I also did a summer internship with an African immigration nonprofit here in the Bronx, I got more and more involved with immigration issues and I eventually ended up coming on board with the Mayor’s office of Immigrant Affairs. It was when the city was going through ID NYC implementation and they really wanted to get involved with the African immigrant community in the Bronx.

Last year I got accepted to NYU. And on my first day of school, September 5, 2017 President Trump announced that he planned to get rid of DACA. I had so much raw emotion that day, I tried to concentrate on my classes, on starting my first day, my first semester but I couldn’t keep it together. It was soul crushing.

Right now I am continuing my studies in NYU and work as a researcher at Columbia University. I started looking for ways to give back and help people who are most in need of assistance. I created a scholarship at Lehman College for people like me, based on my own experience of not having enough money for tuition, books or sometimes food. I thought this would be a good way to help undocumented students seeking to further their education. I gave the first thousand dollars myself and I am fundraising for more. I named the scholarship in honor of my grandmother Aissetou Cisse as she remains my inspiration in life. Her sacrifice paved the way for me to live my dream. And by living my dream I’m living her dream.




Kyungmin Cho

Palisades Park, NJ

My name is Kyungmin Cho and I am currently 21 years old. I was born on Halloween 1997 in Seoul, South Korea. I grew up on the outskirts of Seoul, where I attended kindergarten and elementary school up until I was about 8 years old. My parents decided it would be best to move to the United States for me to receive a better education. So I came to the United States when I was in the second grade.
I don't have many memories from that time, but I remember that it was just about a month between their decision to move and the time we all boarded the plane. At the time I was worried about making new friends and learning a new language. That was my major concern.
We left together as a family--my two brothers, my mom, my dad and my grandmother. It was pretty comforting because I knew that my whole family was going together. We arrived, I believe, in November of 2005.
We settled in Palisades Park, New Jersey. It seemed little weird, because Palisades Park is very Korean. So when I first walked the streets and saw Korean writing and heard Korean spoken everywhere, I asked my mother "Are you sure we're in the US?"
Growing up was little tough, it was hard for me to find an identity. A lot of kids that were around still spoke Korean, it was difficult to learn English, and little confusing. At the time it was hard for me to make friends with American kids because of the language barrier, and a bit tough in school for the same reason.
The hardest thing was definitely just learning the language itself. I remember I was in ESL classes for about two years before I actually was able to feel more or less comfortable with English. I should have tried to make friends with English speaking kids, but instead I was hanging out with Korean kids most of the time, that's probably why it took so long.
I found out about my status in high school but didn't realize the severity of the situation until I was trying to apply for a federal grant for college.
The whole status thing was basically born out of lack of legal knowledge. My parents brought me here thinking that we would be able to have a pathway to a green card because my grandma is actually a citizen of the United States.

From what I'm told by my parents, when we first came in 2005 and we actually did have a way to apply for a green card, but it turned out that my father gave up his American citizenship when he was younger, to go to Korea. And he met my mom there, and she decided that she wanted to stay in Korea. So he was a citizen prior, but now that made everything more complicated because he gave it up. Then our visa expired, and we couldn't do anything. I'm still not 100 percent sure of the extent of what they knew and what they didn't know, but I ended up without the status.
I didn't realize how deeply it was going to affect my future until I started researching it. Luckily DACA came around and I applied for it in 2012 when I was a freshman in high school, and kept renewing it every three years.
In June 2016 after graduating from high school I enlisted in the Army. I decided that this would be my pass to citizenship, and it was made pretty clear that after I completed my basic training I would be naturalized. Now I'm definitely worried, it's been three years and I have yet to start the training.
I'm still contracted by the Army. It's just a matter of when they will call me for basic training. Since it seems like nobody knows what will actually happen to people like me who are DACA recipients and signed up for the Army, we are all waiting for some sort of resolution. So far it's been three years of waiting, confusion and anticipation.
For the first year and a half I was attending weekly voluntarily training at a base in Queens, but after starting college I stopped. So I hope the Army will decide what to do soon. They need start sending people to basic training because I know many different people who are stuck in this limbo as well. And it's a problem.
I go to Temple University in Philadelphia. The only reason that I was able to enroll was because I received merit scholarships. Temple gave me a full ride because of my high school achievements and grades.
I took a leave of absence because I was expecting to be called in for the basic training, but now I'm skeptical about doing it. I really just want to graduate. I don't want to delay my education any further, so I am just waiting for the letter from the Army. If they call me, I will take a leave of absence again and if not, I will graduate in 2020, but I honestly don't know what the future holds for me.
I am worried. Worried for myself, and the future, worried for my family. We lost my brother last year, so it's been tough and not knowing making it much harder.






Karla Pinzon

New York, NY





My name is Karla Pinzon and I was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala. I moved to the United States when I was 8 years old, around 2004. I grew up not having a lot but with a lot of love from my parents. Due to the state of the country—it was very violent—my aunt was murdered. That’s what prompted us to move here, it was just really dangerous.

We sold everything. My toys, our clothes, the car. We promised we would come back for the stacks of family photos and other memorabilia that my mother couldn’t bear to part with.  I was 8. I wish I could recall more of my last day, but details slip away from my memory every year and now all I can remember is the sunken feeling in my stomach once I realized that I didn’t know if I would ever be back. I felt the weight of my footsteps as I walked away from everything that I ever knew and into the unknown. It was the first and last time that I ever boarded a plane anywhere.

Everything happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to process the move until we had already arrived to the United States. My aunt’s absence was ever present as I navigated our new life and it was a burden my family carried everywhere. When I arrived in the country, I also didn’t know a word of English. I started going to school soon after we moved, but it was difficult for me to adapt.  My confidence took a huge blow because I was used to doing well in school.

In fact, I had skipped a grade in Guatemala due to my academic performance. After a couple of months of doing my best to learn I started understanding things and doing much better in my classes. However, I remember getting bullied by a group of girls because of my heavy accent and crying on the way home from school because of the frustration. The first year was hard, but I found solace in being with my family through it all.


My parents tried to explain what it meant to be undocumented when we moved, however, I don’t think I understood the complexity of our situation until I was much older. Above all, I was instructed to take advantage of as many opportunities made available to me while they took care of the rest. I didn’t have much to do but focus on school, so I made it my top priority to “fit in”. I found most comfort in books because I learned so many new words just by reading a few pages. I became best friends with the dictionary and would spend hours poring over the Nancy Drew series, Deltora Quest, Sammy Keyes, etc. My favorite part of the week during elementary school was our class visit to the school library. I think we all did our best to lead the most normal life possible despite our circumstances, but it became increasingly clear over time that there was a lot of emotional baggage that we weren’t addressing. My mom suffered from depression for years, my father distanced himself, I would stay up at night worrying about the future.
It was during this time that I was introduced to the American Museum of Natural History. I remember the first time I ever came here—I lived on 109th and Amsterdam and my dad made us walk all the way here. After walking thirty blocks there was so much anticipation and when I finally get here it’s this huge place with skeletons from millions of years ago and this huge whale and the craziest things. I was fascinated by it. I remember the first time I walked into the hall of biodiversity and I saw something that I could connect to. That was insane because I didn’t think that there was going to be anything that I could connect to. I didn’t think that this was going to be my home then. I got here and see the Quetzal—our national bird—and I feel this deep sense of home being far away yet here—with me.

Maybe subconsciously that’s why I decided to come back here during high school. I was welcomed with open arms and they made me believe in myself—in ways that I didn’t think I could believe in myself. They made me break down barriers that I didn’t think I could break down myself. I took part in other programs—I became an intern and then I started working here. Now I work at the New York Hall of Science as a science coach associate and I see a career path for myself. I see the future. That’s not something that I thought was possible coming from where I’m from. I didn’t think that I would be sitting in this spot—doing what I’m doing—doing what I love to do. Every time I come to work, it’s not a burden—it’s a privilege. Every time I walk through these doors or through the Hall of Science, I’m always excited for my day. I’m excited to learn and to take part in somebody else’s learning process. Education fuels my fire and this place was able to rekindle that flame. It was really impactful.


My parents and I were skeptical, but incredibly relieved when DACA was announced. I think it took me some time to get my application together because we had to gather the money and as many documents as humanly possible that showed my contribution to this country. I remember walking into the office of a NYLAG lawyer and receiving help during my application. They even ended up paying for it at the end. I think that was the first time I realized that the situation I was in was unfair.

Growing up, I had to learn to accept and adapt to the consequences of being undocumented because my parents had made the conscious choice to move here. My family thought that was the best way to cope with the circumstances we lived in. However, as I began taking anthropology classes and learning more about the world, it dawned on me that perhaps we didn’t deserve to be treated the way this country treats undocumented immigrants. My parents paid taxes. They work. We have integrated ourselves into as many aspects of American society as we can and we bring so much passion to everything we do.

DACA was necessary to our community because it made things like getting a state ID possible. It gave me a chance. I would’ve not been able to come back to the museum to work if it hadn’t been for DACA. This upsets me greatly because the political rhetoric surrounding this issue is so misinformed despite hundreds of thousands of lives being at stake.


Anyway, I don’t remember exactly where I was but I remember getting a notification on my phone. I remember crying—crying a lot. It was difficult because I was hoping nothing would happen but I knew that there was uncertainty. Then September 5th came around and it was really a lot to deal with. The day after I had to come into the museum to talk about my position here and how I had to branch out. That was a really scary conversation to have because I didn’t know if I even had the ability to branch out. I didn’t know what was going on with my job here or anywhere else. I have an expiration date on my work permit and that expiration date looms closer every day. It’s scary. The closer that date comes, the more unsafe I feel. I’ve never felt unsafe in this place. This has always been my home because my parents made it my home. Being here, growing up with my brother, being in the school system and making friends has made it my home. Ever since that day, I’ve felt this feeling of not belonging. It’s draining and it’s scary and it’s sad. I’m trying to stay positive and think about everything that I do here. Everything that I’ve been doing means something even if people don’t think that. For me, it means something. Everything I’ve learned and every opportunity that I’ve had means something to me. I’m scared but I won’t let that stop me. I’ve been in scarier situations. When I moved here and I didn’t know anybody, didn’t know how to speak the language, and my aunt had just been murdered—that was terrifying.

This is a different kind of terrifying but it’s not going to deter me from doing what I hope to be doing. Hopefully. There are very clear limitations that I have after August when my permit expires. I don’t know what will happen but up until August I will be working as hard as humanly possible to continue my education, to continue working here and to do everything that I have to do to be good with myself—to be happy. These are the things that make me happy.







My name is Jose Franco, I’m from South of Detroit, I’m 30 years old and I’m undocumented. I’ve been in the US since I was 2 years old, I am originally from San Ignacio in Mexico.

I've been to elementary school, middle school, high school, all here in Detroit. Since I was a little kid I knew that I was undocumented, but I really didn't know the extent of what that meant until high school. My mom would tell me not to open the door because immigration could be waiting on the other side. So I always assumed immigration was like the boogieman and I need to watch out for them. That's the only idea I had about my immigration status at that point. When I reached high school is when I understood what it meant, and that I didn't have a social security number. I wasn't allowed to legally be here in the US, and at any point my family could be deported. Also, like every other teenager around here I wanted to apply for my driver's license, that was like a first step to get a little bit of freedom at that age and to realize that I couldn't apply for driver's license, it kind of sucked.

I felt that I couldn’t make any plans for my future. Most kids in my class were making plans for college and I knew that first thing they ask when you apply for a school is your social security number. And that really angered me and pissed me off. Like why am I continuing my education if I can't even go to college. So I stopped going to high school. I was depressed.

We lived in an immigrant community and my mom heard about this meeting where, in her understanding, I could get gain legal status. You know how parents are, they hear some little tidbits of stuff and they make their own assumptions of what it is. So she heard something about this meeting where people could go and fix your status. Obviously, I was skeptical. I was like "OK mom, I'm going to go to this meeting and tell them I'm a student, they're going to give him my papers? That's not how it works". But I was playing along and I went.

So that meeting was basically a kind of introduction to what the Dream act was, and how we could support this issue and make sure that undocumented people know that there's a way for them to college even without having to legal status.

After that meeting I realized that I could do better. The speaker inspired me and got me excited. So I started researching online what the Dream Act was, how it could benefit me. At that point I was very naïve about how Congress works and how legislation works. I started researching online and finding ways of getting involved. At some point found this online forum for undocumented students. It was so exciting. It was the first time I ever realized that there are many other people like me out there.

I was 14 at the time and I felt alone for so long. Realizing that there's other stories like mine all over the country and that I can communicate with them and see how they're navigating this undocumented system, how they're getting into college, how they're working was life changing. There were people out there just like me that are figuring out how to work within the limitations of their situations. That really lifted me.

So I started just chatting with these people. One of the main guys running the forum was from Michigan. We actually argued a lot with him online, you know how people get when they're behind their keyboard and monitor. And one day there was an immigration meeting to organize a march in Detroit and he heard about it. I went to that same meeting and he introduced himself. I was like, wait, are you that guy from the forum? So it was kind of an awkward to meet him because we would argue with each other and then we just laughed about it. From there we maintained a really good relationship and then both of us began to figure out how to organize, while making mistakes along the way. In 2010 I decided that I wanted to start my own work, my own organization, which is “One Michigan” for immigrant rights.
Since then we've done a lot of amazing work. One of our first events was mobilizing about 500 people to march on Washington D.C. That was one of the biggest marches in DC, about one million people marching for immigrants rights. That was back in 2010, and it was a critical year for us. I was one of the first undocumented students to get arrested in a civil disobedience protest in the Senate building in Washington D.C. Twenty one of us got arrested pressuring members of Congress to push for the Dream Act.

Unfortunately it failed by five votes. We were very close to it happening, but it failed. I felt defeated after that and was again, depressed for couple of months. But I got my head up. After that we focused on stopping deportations and we were successful. We were helping other communities, like Russians and Albanians, which is somewhat ironic because our organization is Latino almost in its entirety, but these communities were reaching out to us for help. And that's when I first started to notice that we do have power to make change even if it's one deportation at a time.

You know, Obama was basically our deporter in chief. He has deported more immigrants than any other president in history. By the end of his presidency it was close to four million people. That’s partially why we decided that we weren't going to be loyal to any political party. We were gonna go after whoever is interfering with our freedom to live here. So we went ahead and said we're going to directly pressure President Obama and embarrass him. So during these deportation campaigns and at every deportation case, we would make sure that the media was present and that we were being highlighted it in the news. We were pressuring local representatives and eventually it reached the Obama administration, putting pressure on them to start changing their priorities in who they deport.


So basically a priority system was created, where people with criminal records would be deported first, but regular folks including students like myself, were still slipping through the cracks. At that time Obama was coming up for reelection and we knew this is a great time for us to take action. So we decided to take over his campaign offices. Here in Michigan we took over his Dearborn office where four of our organization members went in there wearing caps and gowns to symbolize that, you know, we're educated, we're graduating from high schools and we want to stay here in this country. So we were doing these sit-ins to send a message to the President that he needs to do something to protect us. I know we got to them, because there were emails going around the Obama campaign offices saying "don't let people that look like they're Latino into the office because they could be doing the act of civil disobedience."

So literally when any Latino was coming into an office that week, they were basically closing the door because they were assuming that it was going to be an activist trying to take over their office. There was an office in Los Angeles, one in Denver, Colorado, and one in Ohio, and I think in North Carolina as well that were occupied. And then the President’s headquarters in Chicago, I think they heard about it and they sent the message to the President basically saying something like, "Hey, these kids are taking over your office and they're gonna embarrass you with the Latino community. They gonna embarrass you with the immigrant community. They're gonna, make a big deal about it, we need to do something. We need to figure out a solution to this." And then four days later, he went on national TV and made the DACA announcement. A lot of people think it was Obama's decision, but it was actually the community of activists that pressured him to make that happen. So in 2012 DACA was implemented and created. And then after that we focused our efforts on doing workshops to get people to sign up for the program, to register and get lawyers that would help pro bono.

We started here locally in Michigan, doing workshops to help people to sign up for the DACA program. And that was one of my probably proudest moments as organizer–being directly involved in that process, getting people signed up and getting them status.

I started doing all that with just a desire to fix my own status, and ended up helping a lot of people. It probably just came from realization that there are more people like me who need help and I can provide it. Nevertheless, I needed to take care of my own situation, but because I was so involved in activism, I put my own application off for 8 or 9 months. And I only applied around February or March of 2013.

A lot of the work that I've done was free; I'd say about 90 percent of it. It interrupted me having a day job because it is very hard to balance my day job with organizing. So it's a struggle. It's caused me to a burn out couple of times. Most recently, after Trump got elected.

I actually knew he was going win. I realized it three or four months before the election. But it hit me hard when it actually happened. At first I wanted to just ignore it, but it kept spinning in my head. With his rhetoric and what he was doing, I couldn't help but wonder what would happen to me, to my family, to my neighbors. Because I'm already in the government's a database, my mom lives in the house that I originally registered under in my DACA application. A lot of my neighbors are undocumented.


I burned out and have been in this stage since the election. I'm struggling between continuing to organize or just try to make the best of what I have right now.


Jose Franco

Detroit, MI








Basilia Alonso

Washington D.C.


My name is Basi and I was born on September 4th, 1989 in Puebla, Mexico. I was brought to the United States when I was three and ended up in New York. My mom and I crossed the border, to reunite with my dad. He had came to the States a few years prior fleeing violence. My dad was kidnapped and beaten due to his activism in college, resulting in him fleeing to the US. He was never able to finish his education because of that.

My mom was pretty young when she had me—she was 18. Imagine a really young girl with her two or three year old child crossing the border. We crossed with a coyote. That’s someone who brings people over. It used to be a small mom and pop-like business but now it’s mostly controlled by gangs and drug cartels so it’s a lot more dangerous to cross but at that time it wasn’t. I think my uncle met us at the border but I don’t really remember. Then we got on a plane and flew to New York.

The first memory that I have coming to New York was actually the snow. The earliest memories I have of my dad is him tickling me with his beard. I’m very ticklish so as a kid I would snuggle right under his neck because it would tickle me.

Growing up in NY, I didn’t really know too many people like me that were undocumented. At that time undocumented wasn’t really a thing—people would just say “we’re illegals” — and I didn’t know what that meant. Of course, now we don’t say that - we say undocumented.  I knew from a young age that we didn’t have papers and I knew that it made me different somehow although I didn’t know how exactly. I remember my mom telling me “if people ever ask you where you born, tell them you’re from New York—that you were born here”. I didn’t really understand why, but being a proud New Yorker is a thing so I would always say that I was from New York and was born here. My parents were also undocumented. My dad didn’t have a driver’s license and every time we would drive and a cop car would pull up next to us, everyone would get really tense in the car and my mom would tell us to be quiet and stay still. She would tell us not to make any noise because my father was trying to concentrate. I was always confused about why they get so tense when we drove next to a cop, but as I got older I realized that any interaction with the police could have led to something much worse.

The first time I understood what it meant to not have legal status and how that set me apart was in high school. All my friends were learning how to drive so I went home and asked my mom if I could too. I wanted to take the driving classes too and I needed my social security number. That’s when she told me that I didn’t have one. I asked her, “How do I get one” and she told me I couldn’t because I didn’t have papers. “It’s just something you can’t do”, she said. That’s when it finally hit me that I was different and that I wasn’t going to be able to do a lot of the things that my friends were doing. As I got older it became increasingly transparent and even more obvious. Being undocumented was really isolating.

At the time we lived in the suburbs of New York and I felt like I was the only one that didn’t have papers—but part of that was because no one talked about it. It was a big secret and people weren’t as open as they are about it now.

Getting an education was really important to my family and I remember not knowing that I could even go to college in the States. We didn’t think that it was possible. As I was getting closer to graduation, my dad and I were looking into me going to school in Mexico and how that would work. And around that time, by chance, my dad read in the paper that this organization in the city was having drives to register kids to school and that it didn’t matter if you had papers or not. He took me down to Manhattan to this organization called Asociación Tepeyac that helped me fill out an application for the public school system in New York.  That’s how I found out I was going to be able to go to school.



That was my first time consciously marking myself here. When you’re little you have to register yourself to go to school, but that’s something that my parents did, not me. When I filled out the applications to go to college here—that was something that I was doing as an adult. But every step of the way, interactions became increasingly awkward. I remember when I had to take an entrance exam and I didn’t have a social security number—something that was needed to be able to access the exam. I didn’t know what to do—should I tell a random person the truth, should I lie? I knew I had to take the exam to be able to go to school. After debating back and forth in my head, I nervously approached  the exam administrator and told him that I didn’t have a social security number. I didn’t know this but colleges give you an ID number, which I was able to use to take the exam. When I got that number I treasured it.

Then on June 15 2012 DACA was announced. That’s actually one of the most vivid memories of my life that I carry with me. I was going to be a junior in college and because I’m undocumented, I didn’t qualify for most scholarships or financial aid. I was working three jobs to try to pay for tuition and to help my family out. I remember coming home from work one day and my mom called me over to watch the TV with her. She said President Obama was on TV and he was talking about Dreamers. He comes out and starts talking about how great we were, all the contributions that we’d made and saying that we were Americans just like everyone else. That’s when he announced the program and started listing off all the required qualifications. In my head I was making a mental checklist—yes I came in before this date, I’ve been here this long, etc. As he went on I got even more excited as I qualified for everything. When the speech was over, I was in shock. My parents were so happy and were hugging me, as we were all crying. Then I remember feeling really guilty all of a sudden. I remember feeling guilty because I was getting relief but my parents weren’t. That really bothered me and I told them that it wasn’t fair that I was getting this but not them. My mom was just really happy about me being able to study and work. I’ll always remember what my mom told me: she didn’t care what happened to her as long as I was safe.

I enrolled in the DACA as soon as I was able to—as soon as I got the money for the filing fees. I don’t remember there being any hesitation in my mind. A lot of people around me were concerned about sharing their information but for me, knowing what I could gain outweighed any fears or hesitations that I had. I remember when I first got my card in the mail—after that my life changed. Before DACA, I thought that I was going to go to school and put lots of effort towards a degree that I was never going to be able to use. I thought it was just going to be a pretty piece of paper that I hung on the wall. I was just doing it in part to validate the sacrifice that my parents made for me. I couldn’t even do internships because I didn’t have papers. I remember getting accepted to this internship that I really wanted to do but couldn’t take because I didn’t have a social security number. It was the same thing over and over again. After I got DACA, everything changed. It allowed me to get my first real job. The fear of deportation was something that had  always been in the back of my head. After I got DACA, I wasn’t as worried—I was relieved. Thanks to DACA I’ve been able to do so many great things that I didn’t think I would ever get to do. For example, I was able to work on the Bernie campaign—a really amazing experience. I’m able to help my family out financially as well, something that’s really rewarding.


I remember very vividly the day that DACA was announced, how I felt and how happy my parents were. That’s a day I’m never going to be able to forget. I’ll also never be able to forget September 5th, 2017, the day that the program was terminated. On that day, I remember thinking that I could either feel completely powerless or do something empowering. I chose to make my presence know the very day the termination was going to be announced by being one of the people that shut down the street in front of Trump Tower after the announcement was made.
I actually didn’t hear the announcement because I was in jail. Instead of feeling sad I actually felt really empowered to be with other people like me, taking action and reclaiming our space in this country. We’re always told that we don’t belong here, that this isn’t our country, that this isn’t our home, to go back to where we came from but that day, by shutting down the street in defiance of what the administration did, we sent a message that we belong here. That this is my country and I am here and I belong here. Part of me also felt relieved because since Trump came into office, reports would continuously come out about the possibility of terminating DACA—it was exhausting. It started taking a physical toll on me—I was feeling nauseous, like someone had punched me in the stomach, a knot in my throat each time I watched the news. When DACA was finally taken away I was actually relieved because I knew what we had to prepare for and what we had to organize against.

Now, a lot of things can happen with the program and with us Dreamers. What I do know is that we have to keep fighting. DACA was never the solution. It being revoked was always a concern that people had. If a president that wasn’t friendly towards immigrants came into office, they could always revoke the program. We don’t have a direct line to the White House. We don’t have millions of dollars to pay lobbyists to influence senators. We just have each other and our stories. We have no other choice but to keep fighting.

What motivates me are my parents and the other people who don’t have legal status and never will. It’s a really scary time for people that had DACA to lose it but it’s also a really scary time for people that never had any sort of protections. It’s easier to blend in when you can speak English and when you can blend in with the crowd. When you’re someone like my parents, who speak with broken English, you’re an easy target. That’s what keeps me motivated. I can’t stop because if I stop working towards something, then my community loses.

I was mentioning how mentally exhausting it is to be undocumented and I think one on the things that worries me most is the kids that feel like I did when I was younger—the kids that feel isolated and alone. I know what it’s like to live without papers—that was my reality not too long ago.

People that I carry in my heart every day are the people that don’t know what it’s like not to live without papers. I hope they know that they’re not alone—I hope that they feel that. There are so many people fighting for them and that  they also have the power and the strength to fight for themselves. DACA was won as a result of the community and their organizing. The community forced something to happen. Not too long ago, we made the conversation around the DREAM Act happen. My friends went to jail for six days to demand that our humanity gets recognized—to demand that our elected officials take action and recognize that we have leverage and that we can utilize it, even under the Trump administration. We did that. Even under the Trump administration, we are going to keep fighting to stay. There are going to be so many more things that are going to come down the road because we don’t know what’s going to happen to DACA—if it’s going to be extended. We don’t know if the DREAM Act is going to come up for a vote. What we do know is that whatever comes up for a vote is not going to be good for our community. That’s why we were pushing so hard for it to come up during the budget bill vote—that was our best chance to do something. That was an opportunity for allies to really show us that they were with us—and they let us down. They let a lot of people down. Not just Republicans—Democrats too. That was the perfect time to do it. Going forward everything that comes up comes with a caveat. On the news, relief is always dependent on funds for the border wall, border patrol agents, and detention centers—that’s not okay. Yes, we deserve relief, but not at the expense of our families. That’s something that we’re going to have to keep pushing against because we can’t give in.








Sophia

Detroit, MI 




Hi, my name is Sophia and I was born in the Northern part of Poland, by the Baltic Sea in 1995.


Uprooting a life and moving across continents takes exceptional courage and resilience. For this reason, I am motivated to make my mother’s journey to this country worth the sacrifice. I was the first non-Polish person to be born in the Polish hospital. Because of my half-Polish, half-Mongolian mixed race and my parents biracial relationship, my family faced discrimination in Poland due to conservative and nationalistic attitudes. Just walking down a street was difficult, as people would shout and be hostile towards my parents, let alone getting a job or finding a home. We knew we couldn’t thrive like a family there and had to relocate somewhere where we would be able to thrive as a family. This prompted us to move to Japan. It was then that as a newborn, I experienced firsthand the complexity of immigration laws, regardless of the country to which you immigrate. To avoid overstaying our visitor visa, my mother and I would travel between Japan and South Korea. In 1999, my mother and I were granted a visa to join my mother’s family in the United States.

At the tender age of four, my mother and I arrived in Michigan. I was enrolled into kindergarten without the ability to speak English. I quickly learned the language and became an accelerated honors student throughout my academic years. Despite my numerous academic accolades, the complex immigration laws of yet another country have made my academic journey difficult. I have no direct path to citizenship. In fact, I have been advised that the only way to obtain legal status is to have my mother relinquish her parental rights and have a U.S. citizen adopt me, marry a U.S. citizen, or be a victim of a violent crime. Because none of these are humane ways to obtain legal status, my mother and I have been living in the shadows for almost 18 years.

When we moved to the US, my dad didn’t join us for a few years as he stayed in Japan to continue working to provide for his family. When he finally joined us, he wasn’t adapting well as he didn’t speak the language and worked as a hotel janitor despite having a law degree. The final straw was when his mother died and he was consumed by guilt because he was not there to take care of her. I remember my mom getting a voicemail one day when we were at the park—my father said that he could not do this any longer and was at the airport, going back home. This led us to losing the progress we made in gaining legal status as we had applied as a family and there are no legal pathways for a single mother and her child. Growing up, this led to feelings of resentment towards my father as I felt his actions led to our ensuing struggles. Now that I’m older, I understand—it’s the legal system that is inhumane, especially for not allowing him to visit his dying mom.



I was just like every other kid: I played outside with friends from sunrise to sunset in the summer, I was signed up for dance classes and piano classes from second grade, and my mother even had one of those “My child is an Honors Student at x Middle School” bumper stickers on our car. The reality of my undocumented status became increasingly apparent during high school. I was not able to obtain a driver’s license, a bank account, health insurance, or work because I did not have a social security number. When thinking about pursuing higher education, I was limited to private universities or discontinuing my education altogether because Michigan’s public universities did not grant in-state tuition to undocumented students.

I was admitted into a private university on a generous four-year academic scholarship. Because I am ineligible for federal financial aid and the scholarship did not cover all expenses, my grandmother sold her home in Poland to help me pay tuition. During this time, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was introduced, which allowed immigrant youth who came to this country as children to have temporary protection and provided a work permit and social security number. With DACA, my life changed because I could legally work, obtain a driver’s license, and ease the burden on my mother who worked seven days a week to help me pay monthly tuition payments.

I did not take attending a four-year university for granted because I knew that there was always a chance I would not be able to attend the next semester. I did everything I could in the classroom, on campus, and in my communities to make the most out of it. At the graduation ceremony, I was recognized for my passion and commitment to social justice by receiving an award given to one undergraduate student who best exemplifies the mission of the university. I was in such disbelief that the president of the university had to call my name out twice. This moment of great honor and hope symbolized that all the effort my family made to claim every opportunity possible was worth the sacrifice. My mother calls it my “mini Nobel Prize” and I’m working towards my next one.
After graduation, I continued representing the underrepresented, serving the underserved, and being a voice for the voiceless as a devoted advocate of social justice. I started working as an activist for a non-profit organization that protects the rights of immigrants and vocally reminds elected officials that we are actual people and not just numbers and political pawns to be played with. We are human beings like them with the same needs—to be loved, to feel joy, to be safe.

I was also pretty involved during the Presidential campaign—something frustrating considering I couldn’t even vote. On election night I was very optimistic but as the night progressed and the numbers changed, it felt like Doomsday. The day after the election, and after taking my physics exam, people gathered around the campus’ “peace pole” as a sign of solidarity. As I looked around me, I saw my Latino, Muslim, LGBT, colored, and white friends being all led in a moment of reflection, together. So much beautiful diversity yet so unthinkable to other people. That’s when I lost it—I was supposed to be saying this prayer given to us on piece of paper but I just quickly handed it to my friend and ran in the opposite direction so no one would see me break down. One of the staff members that I’m close with ended up coming after me and we had a very meaningful conversation on feeling attacked and marginalized as we were both minorities—me being a DACA recipient and her a member of the LGBT community. I was afraid of what Trump would do after having heard the awful things that fueled his campaign. I felt fearful thinking that I might not even be here in a few months since he basically said he was going to eradicate the DACA program and the undocumented immigrants that came with. She did give me some hope in her way of describing change in the United States. She said that the US was like a large ship—it’s not easy to turn it completely around—change is a lot harder and takes a lot longer than what a single president can do, especially when there’s a large group of people resisting those changes. Since then I’ve done everything in my power to fight against and be part of this larger resistance.
Waking up on March 5th, 2018 with no Dream Act was such a disappointment. This was the self-imposed deadline Congress had established to rectify the DACA situation, yet failed to meet. What would life be like having permanent protection and an earned pathway to citizenship? We weren’t expecting to have to keep fighting for this—it’s mentally and emotionally exhausting—yet Congress ultimately failed a test of humanity. But, immigrant is synonymous with courage and resilience because as immigrants, we do the best with what we have and we don’t give up. I’m still in the fight.


Everything that has happened thus far has really woken some good people up to the reality at hand so I’m hopeful. I shouldn’t have to keep sharing my story to justify my 18 years of existence in this country—but this is a reflection of the dark times we are living in. There are no better advocates than those who are living this urgency every day. My story shows how unjust immigration laws are. I am living the injustice I am trying to change.






My name is Hina Naveed, I was born on May thirteenth, 1990 in Pakistan. I grew up in Dubai until I was about ten years old and then my family immigrated to the U.S., seeking medical treatment for my older sister. When she was about eleven and a half she started limping and that set off a full set of medical tests. She was diagnosed with AVM which is arteriovenous malformation. So, the veins and the arteries in her brain instead of being smooth like highways are like a knotted ball of yarn which is susceptible to stroke, as well as other medical complications.The doctors in Dubai told my parents that my sister didn’t have much longer to live, that we should just to keep her comfortable and that’s it. My dad refusing to take that final answer did a lot of research. We were very fortunate to be able to have the resources to immigrate to the U.S., specifically to Long Island. My dad was able to find a hospital with doctors that specialize in giving care to the type of condition that my sister had.

And name is Carlos Vargas and I was born in Puebla, Mexico and I came to the U.S. at the age of 4. My father passed away a few months before I was born, so I never got to meet him. So my mom has always been the father figure for me up until now. My older siblings, uncles and cousins already lived in the U.S.  

Hina: Coming to the U.S. my earliest memory was when we arrived and seeing snow for the first time. It was January 2001, seeing this white fluffy stuff everywhere and just kind of diving into it head first. That’s what I remember.

Of course, the main reason for us coming here was to treat my sister. Through the course of treatment, we moved from New York to Massachusetts because my sister was transferred to Boston’s Children Medical Center. During our move from New York to Massachusetts, we unfortunately found out a lawyer misfiled our paperwork. As a result we fell out of status. My dad had gone to my sister’s doctor and informed her that we would have to go back to Dubai because of some paperwork. The doctors told him that any interruptions in my sister’s treatment would be detrimental to her well-being and could reverse any progress that had been made. So, he made the decision to overstay our visa and remain in the US. Any parent would.

Carlos: And my most vivid memory is me being in school uniform, and I believe cutting food with a plastic knife and then in comes mom saying “We’re gonna leave school now”. I automatically thought “Great I’m going to go home”. But instead of going home we took a bus to Tijuana, which is the U.S./Mexico border. Now that I think about it, I remember my mom holding me over her shoulders as we were crossing the U.S./Mexico border through the desert. I remember she slipped and fell. I can hear her heavy breathing… I was just four years old, I didn’t know what was happening.

From San Diego we took a plane ride to New York. I remember when we arrived in California, a cousin of mine was saying, “Oh we’re gonna go to Disneyland and that’s the purpose of you coming here”. I was pretty excited.

Hina: Growing up I lived in New York for the first couple of years and then moved to Massachusetts where I went to middle school and then high school. That is where I experienced my assimilating into the community. I lived in a predominantly Portuguese neighborhood with a community that shared values that were very similar to my Pakistani values and upbringing. So, it wasn’t difficult to assimilate because living in a city of immigrants we all had the same values.

Carlos: When we arrived to New York city we first settled in the Bronx. My mom said “This is why I brought my children to the U.S., for a better life.” But the Bronx at the time was a little different than it is now and later we were able to find a home and an apartment in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Brighton Beach had a lot of immigrants–from Russia, Pakistan, India, Mexico... so we felt in a sense at home.

Hina: I was very fortunate that growing up my parents were very open with us. For us our immigration status wasn’t really a surprise. My parents just kind of sat us all down together. They told us–this is what we’re doing. This is the decision we’re making, and these are the consequences that will follow. So, don’t get in trouble. Don’t fly above the radar just kind of be the best person you can be.

At the time I was eleven and a half or twelve and it didn’t have much impact on me. It wouldn’t really hit me until much later in high school when my peers were meeting these social milestones that I just couldn’t meet. I had to get creative with the stories I told, like I’m Muslim they don’t let me drive.

I think I felt it the most my senior year because I graduated at the top of my class.  That’s number two out of more than three hundred students, and I wasn’t able to go to college or explore the educational opportunities that I fought so hard for. It felt like it didn’t matter how hard I tried or how good and smart I was. At the end of the day, I didn’t have the nine-digit access code to American life and that was disappointing and also disheartening. So, within two days of my graduation from high school, I moved to New York and my dad took me to the local community college. I got accepted right on the spot and I was so shocked; so excited to start my education because at that point I thought I wouldn’t have been able to go to college.

Even though college ended up being it’s own journey and full of trials due to my immigration status, I was felt like I got my life on track and could fight to become the best person I could be with or without an immigration status.


Carlos: When I first got here we knew we were undocumented, my mother clearly stated that “We don’t have an immigration status, we don’t have papers”. I didn’t really understand what that meant I just knew that I had to keep my nose clean, go to school, study. Because I lived in a heavily populated immigrant community I experienced deportations first-hand. Like some of my friends parents who would never came home. I never understood that.  But, I did live with a fear that one day my mom wouldn’t be able to pick me up from school. It didn’t really affect me, I was just hoping my mother would be there every day and fortunately she was. A lot of the friends that we shared apartments with sometimes never made it home. They were like “Hey, I am being deported, I’m in a detention center”. So that fear has always been there throughout my life

Hina Naveed & Carlos Vargas


Queens, New York



At the age of thirteen, I couldn’t see my mother working multiple jobs, collecting cans and babysitting. I decided to do my part and got a job at a restaurant. I was a busboy working at thirteen and fourteen years old, coming home at one o’clock in the morning. Then waking up at 6 o’clock, preparing myself to go to school and doing it over again.  I guess until I started needing to drive my status didn’t affect me as much. I couldn’t get a driver’s license in high school. I didn’t see college as an option for me, so I thought this is gonna be my future. After high school I just took a pause, I didn’t enroll in college until the age of twenty seven where it took me seven years to complete a Bachelor's.

It wasn’t because I didn’t have the brains for it, I just felt that the traditional academic pathway wasn’t for me. It wasn’t until my brother Ceasar graduated from college that I said to myself if my brother could do it, why can’t I?


Hina: Because of my sisters’ journey through the healthcare system I was always passionate about pursuing a career in healthcare. Initially, it was pre-med but due to financial reasons, I knew that wasn’t a possibility. So, when I looked into nursing that was something that I was really inspired by and I remembered the impact that the nurses had on my family. So, I took the necessary prerequisites I went to the nursing department and took the test to get in. I had a great GPA and was then told that I couldn’t apply because I didn’t have a social security number. I didn’t have a status and there was a rule in place that prevented anyone who didn’t have one from even applying. I was really disappointed, and they said, “You know your score only last two semesters, so if you're able to adjust your status let us know’.  

Fortunately, what happened next, on June fifteenth, President Obama made the announcement of DACA. My older brother at the time was volunteering at a local immigrant rights association and he told me about it. I did my application, my sister’s application and my younger brothers’ application. We were so excited to get all of our documents together. It took us the longest time to get all of our tax returns, paperwork and report cards. I remember taking two buses to get to a local center in Bayridge called Arab American Association of New York, which had free legal services. About a week before my score would expire I got my DACA card and my authorization. I rushed to the school and presented my documentation. I said, “I can apply, my score is still valid” and because of that, a couple of weeks later I got accepted into the nursing program. I really experienced instant results from getting DACA and that it determined the path I took from there on.

Carlos: My older brother was involved in the immigrant movement. That was around 2009. During that time, I was what we call “in the shadows” within the immigrant rights community where we were very shy and didn’t tell people our immigration status. My brother saw young people on television screaming out, “Undocumented, unafraid” and he got involved. For me, at that time I was undocumented but afraid. So, I see my brother taking this journey and stepping out of the shadows and being really open. It encouraged me to say if my brother can do it, why can’t I?

In 2010 he invited me to Washington D.C. where the Dream Act was being voted on and I really didn’t understand what that meant back then. I do remember walking into a room where there were hundreds of young people like myself were crying. I later found out that the Dream Act failed by four votes. My older brother got to speak while everyone was mourning, distressed and just let down. I don’t remember the speech in detail, but he did say, “Today we are victorious, and our fight continues. This is just the first step to something greater”. I think from there seeing everyone get up and say “Yes, you know what? We will continue our fight” allowed me to get involved, attending rallies and organizing.


In 2012, we were pressuring the president. We knew that something was gonna come out of it. In the morning I was working at a restaurant and the president got on TV. He talked about Dreamers and I didn’t really pay too much attention. He talked about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and that caught my attention. On a small black and white television in the kitchen, where people are cooking, and he mentions that he’s gonna allow for two-year work permits. For me, that meant it was going to be my pathway, to be a part of this country’s society that I know as home.

So, from there, my brother organized a clinic where we were preparing documents for potential DACA applicants. The application was announced on June 15th and folks were able to apply in August. In August I did not wait and submitted my application. A lot of young people and community members were afraid that we were submitting our paperwork to immigration. I didn’t hesitate. For me, it just meant I was going to change my life and take the risk.

Hina: About 5 years ago I was volunteering at a local immigrant rights association in Staten Island. I had a fellowship from New York Immigration Coalition and they placed me in that location because I lived on Staten Island. My first assignment was to research Carlos’s brother Ceasar who was doing a lot of activism. He was working in immigrant rights and the first project was to start a youth group of undocumented individuals, as well as allies to partner with in Staten Island. To have a kind of safe space for them. I then had a meeting later in the week with his brother and after that meeting, we had decided on the following Saturday to bring together all of the contacts that we have in the community.


The immigrant rights organization called El Centro hosted it. We were going to run the meeting together to kind of just have an open forum where people talked about what their needs are, share their story etc. Up until that point, I was very private about my story. It was not something I was comfortable sharing. So that first Saturday, when we all met, Ceasar brought Carlos to the meeting and that’s when we first met each other. I remember at that time I had applied for DACA, but I hadn’t got my work authorization yet. Carlos had already gotten his work authorization and his license. I remember him kind of just sharing it saying, “Like look I applied, I got this” and me just being so excited that I would get mine too.
Subsequently, we co-founded the Staten Island Dream Coalition, which was really started out as an interest in a safe place for people to just come together. Then it turned into workshops to empower other youth to share their stories, to really take control of the narrative. Then it turned into a DACA Clinic helping people apply and showing people how, once they get their work authorization, what to do next. How do they get their social security number? How do they get their license? What schools can they apply to? Because we were living it we were able to do these workshops and conduct this outreach so much more effectively. We were a little bit older and the people that were coming in were a bit younger–it was a really fresh dynamic.

We were able to get a lot of work done. Together we organized lobbying visits to DC and to Albany. So, we were getting civically engaged and getting these youth civically engaged as well. Really exercising our power, where people previously believed they’re undocumented and didn’t have any power. To know that you can come together with allies and really push the elected officials to represent you, or your ally would not vote for them, was very empowering and that’s where we started working together.

Carlos: I was able to graduate college after seven years because I had to work twelve hours a day and then make it to school. Taking two classes at a time, my goal was to always get a job in the financial sector.  I was planning to become a financial analyst and work on Wall street. After college, I graduated with a degree in finance and economics. I automatically applied to a big institution and got an offer as a financial analyst. The salary was very generous but then the calling came again. What was happening with immigration, a lot of raids and DACA not being a permanent solution, I said no. I thought I needed to do my part again. I need to step up and if people are out there doing what needs to be done I can do so as well.

So, I turned it down and continued working with the community. I am a Department of Justice accredited representative, so I’m able to practice law. I go to court and I fight against deportations. I see my cause as advocating for the community. And I think a lot of the immigration laws are very outdated and need to be changed.

Hina: I feel that true power and strength comes from our communities. I think that policies for a long time have not always reflected the needs of the immigrant community. But the strength that comes from these communities really helps people survive and thrive. For me, we survived and thrived before DACA. We owned houses, started businesses and got our education. I was already in college, so I had a life before. DACA helped a lot; not to minimize the work permit, being out of the shadows and all that. But now things are very uncertain again.

In terms of the future, I knew when Trump got elected there were going to be consequences. At that time we said, “We just need to protect as many people as we can until the end of this presidency.” We need to push locally on policies, push on local electives, our mayor, our governor and state to make sure they are protecting as many of our community members as possible. So, with the uncertainty, of course, there is an emotional roller-coaster that comes with it. Especially with Democrats who pretend that they’re sympathetic to the cause and pretend that they care but clearly their actions speak for themselves. That’s where the disappointment comes in for me. They let us down again; they let our communities down again.

Now we’re redirecting that disappointment and that energy to local politics. Making sure that we are recruiting and supporting candidates that understand the issues we care about. That they are supporting the communities that we are concerned for, and have the track record to prove it. That it’s not just more talk and no action. So, redirecting the energy has really allowed me to refocus and I’m very hopeful. You know this year we have a chance to flip the most number of seats at every level and I can see that there’s a lot of passion in the communities. A lot of energy around making sure that we have people who represent us in the seats that we put them in. Also, partnering with allies who understand and are sympathetic. Who understand that immigration and DACA are not just a talking point, it’s people’s lives.

Carlos: I think that there are people out there who do fear what tomorrow will bring or what today will bring. If their parents are going to come home? It reminds me of when I was four years old living in New York City with the fear of deportation. But I think one thing that I learn about living in this great country is that the immigrant community is resilient.

But our lives are being politicized. We’re the “others”, we’re being vilified, we’re the ones who are committing crimes. I think every day more of our communities are debunking these myths. I think it's becoming self-evident that we are here, and we are as American as anyone else.

We’re Americans in every way, in our mind and in our hearts. We are American in every way but one, right? On paper. And I think when I first came out of the shadows in 2010 I said very vocally that I was “undocumented and unafraid”. For me going back in the shadows is not an option. This is my home and I’m going to continue fighting. They can continue to deport, break families but they cannot deport a dream. I think that’s something that this community has been very vocal in saying. That we are American, and you cannot deport the American dream.












My name is Osmar. I was born in Tila in Mexico. It's next to the Guatemalan border. I was brought here on July 26, 2004.

I have two younger sisters, one in high school and one in elementary school. I'm currently attending the University of Detroit Mercy, where I get about 90 percent financial aid towards my tuition, before that I attended Western International High School. I'm 19 years old. Basically I spend all my time working and studying.

I don't remember much about my childhood, just playing with my cousins and that our house was on a steep hill. After my second younger sister was born my dad went to the States in order to support the family.

When I was five my family and I crossed the border in Arizona, but I don't know exactly where. I remember running in the desert and climbing the ladder. The man who was helping us cross, the coyote, carried me while we were climbing. Then we ran and hid in the back of a truck and we were brought to a mobile home where we spent the rest of the night. The next morning we were brought to an apartment where we stayed for a week, while the coyotes were waiting for the rest of the payment from my dad to come in. After the money cleared they took us to Chicago where we reunited with my dad.

After Chicago we went to Detroit. First we all lived in one small room - my parents, my two sisters and me. Then we moved to a house but we shared it with seven other families that were also immigrants. Everybody was in the same position, just trying to start their new life.

In November I started a kindergarten. I had a lot of trouble adapting. I didn't speak English and my teachers didn't speak Spanish. It was difficult because I just couldn't communicate with anyone. I only started adapting to the environment around first or second grade, we had some teachers who spoke Spanish so I was able to understand more easily and that helped me to learn English. It was still very hard and I was failing most of my classes. Thankfully, the school provided a tutor for one hour a day to help kids like me. That really helped.


In middle school I began to understand that I was undocumented and what it meant. This nation might be a melting pot, but it feels that we're the bottom, slowly burning. People were telling me, "Why are you here? You shouldn't be in this country like this. Go back. You need to understand that what you did was wrong."

Even close friends were saying that I could be arrested any moment and deported, and they'll never see me again. I would be told that getting an education is pointless because I'm gonna end up working some job 24/7 where no-one will care that I've gone to school.

With time I learned to ignore people like that and make my own way. There are a lot of people like me here, you know there are 12,000,000 undocumented immigrants in the United States and we are here not to take over the country, we are here to adapt and to make it better. So when people told me not to bother to do something I took it as motivation. Every time someone told me I should quit, I'd tell them I wouldn’t. And that actually encouraged me reach for the highest possibility, to reach for the future where I wouldn't be separated by status.

Then I heard about DACA and just hearing that announcement was a relief. It felt like we were finally being given a chance to eventually become citizens, or just a chance to work and further our education without obstacles.

I had to convince my parents which took a while, but once I did we went to this free lawyer in Southwest Detroit and started the paperwork. We needed a lot of documents, proof of age, some pictures, but once I applied I was accepted within three months.

But you know what they say- you don't know what you have until it's gone. Once DACA was announced people stopped protesting, and the community didn't do much. We got lazier, we stopped fighting what we believed for. We didn't exercise our rights and as a result we got Trump and the rescinding of DACA.

As the date of my renewal approaches I feel more anxious. Anxious about my scholarship being taken away, anxious about traveling to faraway places and being stopped by the police or ICE, anxious about my future and the future of my family.

Osmar Angles

Detroit, MI








Daniela Ramirez

Washington D.C.







My name is Daniela Ramirez and I was born in Acapulco, Mexico in February of 1999. I was brought over to the US at the age of 4 by my mom. While not as bad as it is today, the crime rate in Acapulco was steadily increasing. I lived with my mom, grandmother, and a couple cousins in a house. While we were getting by and not getting in any trouble conditions around us were gradually getting worse.

My mother knew that if she wanted to provide a future for us, we would have to move to the US. One day she finally decided to immigrate and left me in the care of my grandmother at the age of 3. I didn’t join her until a year later as she wanted to get situated before sending for me. I remember my grandmother explaining how I was going to go to “the other side” to see my mom. While I don’t remember much, I do remember getting into an SUV and driving down to the border. Our driver was American and we called her “la gringa”. There were several other families with us and some of them, like my grandma and cousins, had to hide in a secret compartment underneath the trunk of the SUV. We added piñatas in the back to make things seem normal. I remember sitting next to a girl while her mom hid on the floor in front of us, covered by a blanket.

I remember being stopped by a border security officer and he came up to ask me a question—keep in mind I was four at the time. I think he was trying to ask where we were from or where we were going and I didn’t know how to respond so I said the first thing that came to mind—Mexico. I think that tipped him off that something wasn’t right and he made the driver turn around and drive back. Everyone in the car was furious at my grandmother and I because they weren’t able to cross the border because of what I said. I remember my grandmother defending me because I was four and had no idea what was going on. Eventually we did make it in, arriving in Atlanta. I remember seeing my mom—a very emotional moment since I hadn’t seen her for a whole year.

I was then signed up for elementary school and started kindergarten. It was definitely an adjustment for me as I didn’t speak the language and didn’t understand what my teacher was saying. For the first couple of months, I hated going to school. I would lock myself in the bathroom when it was time to go to school because I hated it so much. My mom tells me how much I would cry because I didn’t understand anyone at school.
Eventually I got the hang of things and did pretty well.

By the time I was in fifth grade, I was enrolled into the honors program—something that I worked really hard to get into. By the time I got into high school, I knew that I wanted to go to college.

In a way, I always knew that I was undocumented but it didn’t really affect me until I got to high school. When I wanted to apply for a job, get my driver’s license, and apply to colleges, that’s when it started to become an issue. Georgia is a lockout state, making finding scholarships incredibly difficult. I would go online and search for all types of scholarships—meeting all the GPA and academic requirements but not the US citizenship one. This made my options very limited. One day, one of my teachers told me about a scholarship called Posse. I was unsure about my eligibility, as all the other students at my high school that had received it were citizens. Fortunately, the scholarship didn’t mention anything about a citizenship requirement. Going forward, I focused all my energy towards getting this scholarship. I tried my best to get good grades—staying late after school for tutoring when I needed it. I would stay up until 4am doing my homework if I had to. I even participated in all the extracurricular activities that would look best on a college application. I became president of different clubs and helped out in the community. I did a couple of internships: working at the Mexican consulate in Atlanta and the technical college system in Georgia. By that time I had received DACA documentation, allowing me to be eligible for these positions. As I approached senior year, I was nominated for the Posse scholarship and after a 3-month intensive interview process, I was selected as a scholar. While the scholarship was full tuition, I knew I needed to keep applying for scholarships to cover the rest of my college expenses. I ended up receiving three for scholarships that allowed me to go to college.


I heard about DACA and I knew there was something in the works but at the same time was very confused as my parents heard a lot of rumors about all the legal stuff and it mislead them a lot. I remember my cousin qualifying for DACA because he was fifteen and I didn’t because I wasn’t. My mom spoke a lot with my aunt after that trying to figure out all that was needed to become a DACA recipient: the lawyers, the application, and the documentation.

At the time, I was definitely pretty oblivious of what exactly DACA was. I knew I could get a driver’s license and I was pretty excited about that. I also knew that it would be easier for me to go to college.
As I did more research, I realized that it allowed me to get a job and be protected from deportation.

Eventually I got the hang of things and did pretty well. By the time I was in fifth grade, I was enrolled into the honors program—something that I worked really hard to get into. By the time I got into high school, I knew that I wanted to go to college.

When Trump got elected, we knew that something was coming. The fact that he kept talking about ending the DACA in addition to his blatant hatred towards immigrants made it pretty evident. I also knew that we were pretty vulnerable, making us an easy target. Tensions rose leading up to the day of the announcement and it kept getting more real. I remember the day it was announced, September 5th. I didn’t talk to anyone that day; I just went to class without looking at my phone until I was done. I knew that it was really going to affect me and that I had to focus on my grades.


My worst fear now isn’t for myself. It’s the fact that the government has our information. They made a promise to us saying that we could come out of the shadows in exchange for temporary protections. Now that we’ve come out of the shadows, they know where we live, where we go to school, and where we work. That’s scary because I don’t know if they’re going to keep their promise.

So now, I am uncertain about my future and the future of my family. I know that if I do end up going back that my life will be endangered. That sounds dramatic but where my family is from is beautiful but one of the most dangerous cities in the world due to the crime rate. Just talking to family members that are still there—it’s crazy, people are living in fear. If we go back, starting from nothing, it’s going to be incredibly difficult and dangerous.
So for those who want us out of the country I want to say one thing - empathy. Put yourself in the shoes of a single parent and you’re in a country that you know is not safe. You want to go to American because it’s supposed to be the “land of the free” and safe but even that is incredibly difficult. It takes time and money and for many, they never make it because the crime gets to them first. Put yourself in their shoes. What would you do for your family? Wanting the best for your child is not a crime—no matter what your skin tone is. Crossing a border to save your family does not mean you should be ripped apart.




























































Hector Martinez

New York, NY








My name is Hector Jairo Martinez. I was born on February 10, 1991, in a small Andean town of  Filandia Quindio in Colombia. I was raised in the outskirts of the town where our family had a small farm house. I had a happy childhood. My mom had 10 brothers and sisters, and my dad had 10 brothers and sisters, so I had a lot of parents! My family was very Catholic so I have a lot of memories of big family gatherings around Christian holidays, going to church every Sunday with the whole family and going to each other's houses all the time.  This sense of family unity is kind of embodied in my own experience.

My father moved to the US in '92, which was a year after I was born. My mom joined him seven years later. I was being mostly brought up by my grandmother, but in 2001 she got diagnosed with cancer and my parents decided that it will be better if I joined them in the States. It was a very difficult decisions for everyone. My grandmother came to visit us is 2003, and then her cancer got worse, she passed away in 2004. I was not able to go to her funeral.

My parents lived in a small town called East Hanover in New Jersey. And it's primarily Italian. The reason why I say that is because when I started school, there was not one single Spanish speaker in that school. And the closest thing they could find for me was a second generation Italian person, which meant that they spoke a little bit of a Italian and they could understand what I was saying, but we were still very much lost.  And I remember breezing through ESL class because I just really wanted to communicate. So, I started school in the fall of 2001, and by the springtime I was kind of communicating a little bit better. By the sixth grade I was already an English speaker. And I adapted pretty well, you know, just because I really liked to talk and engage with people.
I knew I was undocumented from the moment I got off that plane. I knew that there were certain things I could do. I knew that there were certain things I couldn't do. I started seeing that pretty early in life - like not being able to attend after-school programs for example. I think a really interesting thing about being undocumented that so much of it is based off of small transactions and things. I did really well for myself in school. I was a very good student and when I was in eighth grade I won this award. It was called the Raoul Wallenberg Award for something, and the prize came with a $2,000 check.. And they had selected me because of all the different work I did at school and just being kind of a role model for other kids. And I just remember them asking me for a social security number so that they could give me the money. And I remember having to say no to that because we didn't have it. Then it just became more of the normal - every time that I needed to access something in a public domain, there was always that limitation. Like for example, I wanted to get a driver's license, I couldn't. Then it became even more difficult with college. So when I was doing the whole application process, this was 2009, and I was applying to different schools and any school that offered me some sort of financial aid, I could not take it fully because I didn't have the social security number. Or whatever aid they were able to give me, I had to turn down because my family didn't have the remainder of the money to pay for the school.

So I learned to kind of navigate and work with the system, which is how I ended up at City College. City College being part of CUNY is one of the lowest tuition rates for out-of-state students. And, you know, it was about $4,000 a semester and that's something that I could actually afford and pay for myself through work. And that's kind of how I wound up in school and I'm still in studying.

I started as a political theory major, and then I switched into liberal arts. And currently I'm chipping away at an associate's degree. When I graduated high school I had a 3.6 GPA, I had a full future ahead of me, and then when I started college courses, I got to skip a lot of the prerequisites because I had taken them in high school.  So I went straight to really interesting political theory classes. And I did that for about two years and then I got really disenfranchised with the whole system because our immigration case went downhill. 

It was 2011, my mother and I were given an order to leave the country within 90 days. And that was one of the most difficult things we had to face here in this country because again, not having that social security, not having that permit to be here, you're basically subject to what is known as Immigration Customs and Enforcement Agency (ICE) and once they find you, you will be incarcerated and deported. I was 20 years old and my parents were terrified for me. So they put me in hiding and my mother chose to self-deport because she didn't feel like dealing with the whole immigration debacle anymore. So for about a year I had to live and not really appear in the system anywhere. And I will say that that was one of the most challenging things to have to just lose a sense of who you are and just kind of hide from life. It was a weird thing.

In the spring of 2012, Obama enacted this policy which was known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and it would cover people like me who came to this country at a really young age and we kind of lived our lives here and this was what we knew as our home. So when that happened, I took it. I forgot about being any sort of immigrant or anything like that and I just started to live a normal life. Shortly after, I started school again and then I started to save up so that I could move to the city. And then in 2013 I finally moved to New York.

I tried to live what you would call a "normal" life. But then in September 2017 when Trump finally rescinded DACA, that was a moment where I was reminded what happens when we take a seat and just wait for things to happen. So on that day, there was a couple of people that were doing a sit-in on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower, and amongst those people happened to be one of my friends that I grew up with.

And seeing my friend being on the streets and being arrested, and just seeing the treatment that this person got, got me really activated. And it was that moment that I said, you know, I have to do something and have to be part of the movement. So from then on I started to become a little bit more involved, not just from speaking, but also from taking actions. And I got involved with the Seed Project, which is part of "Movimiento Cosecha." It's a grassroots organization, and the Seed Project basically had a timeline from the rescinding of DACA to March 5th when supposedly Congress had to make a some sort of decision about us. So up to that day, we kept working to kind of escalate the conversation and to push for something, but also to remind the community that it was up to us to create a change.


We were taking it to the streets, doing sit-ins, protests, occupying public buildings. We did a sit-in in Chuck Schumer’s office in D.C., got arrested and spent 6 days in jail while in a hunger strike. But it all had little effect on our legislators, the spending bill was passed without any mentioning of DACA. Then we decided to do a walk from New York to DC. And the purpose of that walk was to really show the American public what an immigrant looks like, but also to kind of share with the community to change the message that it's not about being different, that we are the same in our experiences and that a piece of paper does not define who we are.

The march took 15 days. We went from New York to DC. We started at the bottom of the Battery Park which oversees the Statue of Liberty, and for a lot of immigrants that's a really symbolic place. And then from there we went through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and into DC. And each day we walked anything between 15 to 20 miles. We would get up every day around 8:00 AM, pack the van that was holding our stuff, and would be on the road walking by 9:00 AM. And then we'd have a lunch break and by like 5:30 as the sun was setting we'd get ready to stop walking for the day and head to where we were hosted. Usually at the places that we were hosted, we would have dinner with the community, share our stories and listed to theirs. Then we’d go to bed and do the same thing next day. The middle of the march we went through Philadelphia and we did a demonstration at the Liberty Bell. We went up one at a time and proclaimed why we were walking, and we each shared our story with the public.
And that was a really difficult day for all of us because we just opened up and spilled our guts in front of everyone, after walking for so long and thinking about why we were doing it, so it was important to finally say it. Each of us had a little picture of someone that we were walking for. We would go up with that picture, put a candle next to it and tell our story. That was intense and beautiful, and it created the tone of the rest of the walk.

When we got to DC we wound up at Martin Luther King's memorial honoring the legacy of struggle. And that was on February 28th. And then on March 1st, we had another little walk from the Washington Monument through the National Mall, and then a couple of people did a sit-in on the road right in front of Congress and got arrested there. And again, it was just calling for the same message of dignity, respect and permanent protection for the undocumented community.  

Also, I’d like to mention something that played a big role in my life and helped with my struggles is yoga. Since I was 16 years old, I have managed to work in a yoga studio in New Jersey. And then when I first moved to New York, my first job was also at a yoga studio. This place has been my home for the last four years, more or less. This is the Iyengar Yoga Institute of Greater New York.

The beautiful thing about yoga is that I wouldn’t be the person I am, or even just be here without it because yoga is a practice that really seeks to bring this kind of unity of mind, body, breath and spirit. And you know, I've been doing this since a young age.  I've been in a yoga studio since I was 16, I'm now 27 and it taught me to stay centered even when things get really difficult. Like I said earlier, there was this year where I couldn't really do much. I had to be in hiding and just the ability to just to come back to my breath, to come back to my practice and to settle in - that has been something that really has kept me grounded and I saw the benefits of this practice when I went to jail and I was doing the hunger strike. So because I have this relationship with my body and I'm always kind of talking to it, being hungry for six days was not agonizing. It was more like I had this thing that kept complaining and I was just kind of listening to it.

The last thing I’d like to say is that the strength that any person gets is from the courage and support of the community. And that's kind of why these things really make a difference, because when we see people that are standing up, not only for themselves but for others, it tells us that it can be done. And even when things really seem impossible, things slowly begin to change. When people ask me what's the purpose of what you're doing, I keep saying this is a little bit like a glacier forming, you know. When glacier sits over a rock, it takes a long time to carve anything into it and you don't really know what has been carved until all the ice has melted. And that's kind of what it feels right now.