Despite inaction by Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress on permanent legislative protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and other undocumented immigrant youth, Dreamers are still living their lives—or at least trying to. They include Alonso Reyna Rivarola, one of the estimated 10,000 DACA recipients who call Utah home. Despite nearly 90 percent of Americans supporting permanent protections for undocumented immigrant youth, the GOP-led Congress remains at a standstill for young people like Reyna Rivarola:
If nothing changes legislatively in the next nine days, he’ll be able to apply for a renewal of his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status. If his renewal application is accepted, he can continue to pursue his education by participating in the sociology doctorate program, which he’s already been accepted into, at the University of Utah.
But if he’s not able to renew DACA, he’ll have to have a “plan B, C and D,” he said Monday.
That’s a frustrating reality for young immigrants who know no other place but the U.S. as their home. Utah’s senior senator, Republican Orrin Hatch, should really be among those leading the charge. Along with Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, he introduced the very first version of the DREAM Act way back in 2001. But in 2018, Hatch has yet to endorse the DREAM Act introduced last year by Durbin and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Mitt Romney, running to replace Hatch, said in 2011 that he would have vetoed it as president:
“Even at the local level, all of our [Utah] representatives support a different bill,” Reyna Rivarola said. “Our own congressmen and [congress]woman and senators could not come together on this. That was really disappointing.”
Utah’s 4th District Rep. Mia Love supports the USA Act — a bipartisan effort that would protect DACA recipients from deportation while securing the U.S. border — and undoubtedly wants legislation that provides DACA recipients with a pathway of citizenship, she told The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board last month.
Statements of support are great and all, but they don’t protect immigrants from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. What they need is a vote, one that Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan hasn’t allowed on the USA Act, or the bipartisan DREAM Act, despite him telling a frightened DACA recipient during a televised town hall last year that she shouldn’t worry about ICE. So, young immigrants like Reyna Rivarola and Leezia Dhalla continue to wait, to hope, and to live in limbo.
Dhalla, a DACA recipient from Texas, faces her protections expiring in just two months. Without DACA protections, young immigrants lose their valid driver’s licenses, their permission to work legally and support themselves and their families, and protection from deportation. “My employer will have to let me go,” she wrote in an op-ed. “I won’t have a way to pay my rent; my family and friends will be inconsolable, knowing that I can be deported at any time”:
Last week, the Supreme Court provided a glimmer of hope by declining to immediately rule on a lower federal court’s ruling, in January, that halted the Trump administration’s decision to wind down DACA on the basis that the decision was legally “flawed.” It’s just a temporary reprieve. The court’s decision means that current DACA beneficiaries will be able to apply to renew our work authorizations and will be, for the moment, protected from immediate deportation. But we know this ruling could be overturned, or that the administration could try to terminate DACA by executive order as a way around the courts. Remember the Trump administration’s travel ban? Several versions were blocked by courts. A later version wasn’t.
What has been most misunderstood about this ruling is that for tens of thousands of DACA recipients whose protections expire in the next few months, many of us could still lose our work permits, driver’s licenses, livelihoods and, most important, affirmative deportation protections. That’s because the confusion created by the administration’s DACA termination meant that many people like me were administratively unable to apply early enough for renewal of our status to ensure that there wouldn’t be a gap in protection when our existing protection expired — it typically takes four to five months for government review of a renewal application. The Supreme Court ruling came too late for individuals whose status expires in the next several months, including me.
“Even though I’m devastated at the prospect of being evicted from the only country I know,” she continues, “I realize that I’m fortunate. There are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dreamers who weren’t eligible for DACA under the Obama administration’s rules because they were either too young or too old to apply.” They include a 10-year-old Texas child detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after emergency surgery and a Michigan dad cruelly deported on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day:
They, too, are left behind by this court decision: Young people like Rosa Maria Hernandez, a 10-year-old with cerebral palsy who came to the U.S. as a baby and was too young to apply. Customs and Border Patrol agents stopped her ambulance at an immigration checkpoint while it was carrying her to emergency surgery. Dreamers like Jorge Garcia of Lincoln Park, Mich., married to a U.S. citizen and the father of two U.S. citizen children, who came here as a 10-year-old. He was deported in January — three decades later.
Dhalla has lived in the U.S. for 22 years and is American in every single way but on a piece of paper. “I grew up an American,” she writes. “I went to school in San Antonio. I was a Girl Scout. I volunteered in my community, helping to feed the homeless and raising money to help fund the bone marrow transplant of a boy I’d never met. I worked the cash register at my local grocery store and spent years fine-tuning my square-dancing skills, a testament to my Texas roots. This is my home.”