Monarch butterflies, passionate activists and “we're here to stay” signs have become emblematic of marches and protests calling on presidential administrations to defend DACA Recipients of deportation over the last 12 years.
Saturday marks the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which was established by the Obama administration in 2012.
“I've never felt so powerful. I've never felt so humble. I've never felt so happy,” said Greisa Martínez Rosas, director of United We Dream, as she recalled hearing news of the DACA announcement in 2012.
When he was 7 years old, Rosas crossed the Rio Grande River at the US-Mexico border with his parents. She lived as an undocumented immigrant in Texas and later worked as a community organizer, rallying support to ask the Obama administration to protect Dreamers.
However, after DACA was launched, Rosas said she waited about a year out of fear to apply. By giving her personal information, she believed immigration officials would deport her undocumented mother.
“I remember having the work permit in my hand,” Rosas said. “It was kind of anticlimactic, because it's just a piece of paper. It's a piece of plastic, and it was the same feeling when I got my social security number. They're just numbers on a piece of paper, but then they mean a lot.”
Rosas' work permit allowed her to quit her job selling cars to become a full-time advocate for the nonprofit immigrant advocacy group United We Dream.
It's a job she still holds 12 years later, calling for legal protections for DACA recipients since the program was declared illegal in 2021, and its future remains uncertain amid an ongoing legal battle.
Like Rosas, Astrid Silva, a Dreamer with the immigrant advocacy group Dream Big Nevada, became a face of the DACA movement as a community organizer starting in 2009, working closely with elected officials to advocate for the needs of those who they were brought to the United States as children. .
“I still remember to this day the excitement, and all this optimism of what will come with it,” Silva recalls of the day DACA was announced.
Silva was 4 years old when she crossed the border between the United States and Mexico illegally with her parents, and she remembers from an early age that she did not share the privileges of her classmates.
“I remember being so scared of my 18th birthday,” Silva said, recalling that he couldn't get official identification or a government license like most of his friends.
Now, Silva is reminding the so-called “Dreamers” not to take their status for granted.
“My request is that we don't give up, that we don't settle for a two-year temporary,” says Silva. “We have to get the permanent solution.”
Rosas and Silva are just two of the more than 500,000 people who are currently actively benefiting from the DACA policy. They help form the handful of Dreamers who have organized their communities for more than 12 years, delivering their petitions to lawmakers in Washington.
“Whatever the outcome of the election, I'm here to stay,” said Rosas. “This is my home and I have to keep fighting.”
With immigration among the top issues for voters heading into the November election, both Republicans and Democrats are campaigning on their proposed policies regarding undocumented immigrants and the future of DACA.
President Biden last week issued an executive order restrict asylum applications for undocumented immigrants along the southern border. sources he also told CBS News on Friday that the Biden administration is preparing an immigration assistance program that will offer work permits and protections from deportation to unauthorized immigrants married to US citizens, as long as they have lived in the US for at least 10 years.
Those sources said the Biden administration is also preparing a second plan that would streamline the process for Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants to apply for waivers that would make it easier for them to obtain temporary visas, such as H-1B worker visas highly qualified
Ahead of DACA's 12th anniversary, the Biden-Harris campaign released an English-language ad titled “Here to Stay” in battleground states. It includes a compilation of Dreamers that contrasts Mr. Biden's immigration record with that of former President Donald Trump.
The campaign also released a second ad Friday titled “Standing with Dreamers,” in which Vice President Kamala Harris underscores her commitment to protecting Dreamers, while condemning Trump's immigration policies.
“The former president when it comes to immigration, man, his policies are cruel and ineffective,” Harris said.
In 2017, when Trump announced the end of DACA, he issued a statement saying that he is “not in favor of punishing children, most of whom are adults, for the actions of their parents. But we also have to recognize that we are a nation of opportunities because we are a nation of laws.”
At the time, Trump said he looked forward to working with Congress to address immigration issues. Now, as part of his re-election campaign, Trump has promised begin mass deportations upon taking office.
“We are going to begin the largest national deportation operation in the history of our country,” Trump told his crowd on June 6 during a Turning Point Action town hall in Arizona.
Mass deportation proposals currently have bipartisan support among registered voters, according to the latest CBS News poll. A majority of nearly six in 10 voters say they would favor, in principle, a new government program to deport all undocumented immigrants living in the United States illegally. A majority of a similar size would cause local law enforcement to try to identify those living in the US illegally.
— Camilo Montoya-Galvez and Anthonly Salvanto contributed to this report.
