Monarch butterflies, passionate activists and “we are here to stay” signs have all become emblematic of marches and protests calling on presidential administrations to defend their positions. DACA recipients of deportation in the past twelve years.
Saturday marks the 12th anniversary of the launch of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which was created by the Obama administration in 2012.
“I have never felt so powerful. I have never felt so humble. I have never felt so happy,” said Greisa Martinez Rosas, director of United We Dream, as she recalled receiving news of the announcement of DACA in 2012.
As a seven-year-old child, Rosas crossed the Rio Grande River at the U.S.-Mexico border with her parents. She lived as an undocumented immigrant in Texas and later went to work as a community organizer, rallying support to call on the Obama administration to protect Dreamers.
However, after DACA was rolled out, Rosas said she waited about a year to apply out of fear. By giving her personal information, she believed immigration officials would deport her undocumented mother.
“I remember receiving the work permit in my hand,” Rosas said. “It was a bit of an anticlimax 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 they mean so much.”
Rosas’ work permit allowed her to leave her job as a car saleswoman to become a full-time advocate with the immigrant nonprofit United We Dream.
It’s a job she still holds 12 years later, calling for legal protections for DACA recipients as the program was declared unlawful in 2021, and its future remains uncertain amid an ongoing legal battle.
Like Rosas, Astrid Silva, a dreamer from the immigrant advocacy group Dream Big Nevada, became a face for the DACA movement as a community organizer in early 2009. She worked closely with elected officials to advocate for the needs of those brought to the U.S. as children. .
“I can still remember to this day the excitement, and it was all that optimism about what comes with this,” Silva recalled of the day DACA was announced.
Silva was four years old when she illegally crossed the US-Mexico border with her parents, and from a very young age she remembers not sharing the privileges of her classmates.
“I remember being so scared of my 18th birthday,” Silva said, recalling that she was unable to get an official ID or permit from the government like most of her friends.
Now Silva is reminding so-called “dreamers” not to take their status for granted.
“My question is that we do not give up, that we do not settle for a temporary period of two years,” Silva says. “We have to find a permanent solution.”
Rosas and Silva are just two of the more than 500,000 people currently actively benefiting from the DACA policy. Together, they make up a handful of Dreamers who have been organizing their communities and delivering their advocacy to lawmakers in Washington for more than a dozen years.
“Whatever the outcome of the election, I am here to stay,” Rosas said. “This is my home and I have to keep fighting.”
With immigration one of the top issues for voters heading into the November elections, both Republicans and Democrats are campaigning on their proposed policies toward undocumented immigrants and the future of DACA.
President Biden last week issued an executive order limiting asylum claims for undocumented immigrants along the southern border. Sources also told CBS News on Friday that the Biden administration is preparing an immigration relief program that would provide work permits and deportation protections to unauthorized immigrants married to U.S. citizens, as long as they have lived in the U.S. 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, making it easier for them to obtain temporary visas such as H- 1B visas for highly skilled workers.
Ahead of the 12th anniversary of DACA, the Biden-Harris campaign released a Spanglish ad titled “Here to Stay” in several battleground states. It includes a compilation from Dreamers that contrasts Mr. Biden’s immigration history with that of former President Donald Trump.
The campaign also released a second ad on Friday titled “Standing with Dreamers,” in which Vice President Kamala Harris underlines her commitment to protecting Dreamers while condemning Trump’s immigration policies.
“When it comes to immigration, his policies are cruel and ineffective,” Harris claims.
In 2017, when Trump announced the termination of DACA, he issued a statement saying he “does not support punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents.” But we must also recognize that we are a nation of opportunity. because we are a nation of laws.”
Trump said at the time that he looked forward to working with Congress to address immigration issues. Now, as part of his re-election campaign, Trump has has promised to start mass deportations after taking office.
“We will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in the history of our country,” Trump told his audience at a Turning Point Action town hall in Arizona on June 6.
Proposals for mass deportations currently have support among registered voters, according to the last two parties CBS News poll. A majority of nearly six-in-ten voters say they would in principle support a new government program to deport all undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. A similar-sized majority would ensure that local law enforcement agencies attempt to identify those living in the U.S. illegally.
— Camilo Montoya-Galvez and Anthonly Salvanto contributed to this report.
