For the roughly 800,000 immigrants who are protected by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, deportation feels like it could become a terrifying reality under the Trump administration.
In 2012, former President Barack Obama’s DACA program gave undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US illegally as children, known as “Dreamers”, a renewable two-year deferral from deportation as well as a permit to work in the country legally.
Since then, the immigration policy has sparked division along partisan lines. However, it is something the courts are upholding, at least temporarily, after President Donald Trump sought to phase the program out in 2017.
In The Post’s video series, “Face Your Hater,” Estrella, a Mexican-born DACA recipient and student with a part-time job, currently living in Los Angeles, discussed her fears with Lori, an Orange County entrepreneur who is anti-DACA.
“Every country has laws to become a citizen, I feel very strongly that laws are in place for a reason,” Lori said of her anti-DACA stance.
“Do you think I should be deported?” Estrella asks Lori.
“I’d hate to see you deported, but if that’s the law, you gotta go. I hope you have family in Mexico. That’s all I could say,” Lori responds.
Estrella, who admitted that being deported “is the scariest thought I have,” then goes on to explain her fear of being sent back to a country she doesn’t “even remember.”
“It makes me feel that I don’t belong here and if I go back, I don’t belong there either. If I were to get deported I know I’d have to go back to Mexico, to a place that I don’t even remember, and have to start my life over there.”
But while Lori acknowledges she feels for Estrella and her story, the Wisconsin-born businesswoman admitted that she still believes a lot of it is “garbage” — arguing that Estella should be grateful for the opportunity to have studied in the US.
“My daughter would give her right arm to go study in Europe. You’re studying in America, I mean, you’re gonna go back with a degree, you’re gonna go back and have a great job, why is it so horrible living in Mexico. Why?” Lori asks.
Estrella responds by saying the issue isn’t about Mexico being “horrible”, but that she feels as though she’s being “kicked out” of a place she considers her home.
“Why don’t you all go and stand up to your own government and go, ‘hey, give us a job, give us housing,’ and I just see this big group of people not doing it and they just want this free ride,” Lori hits back at Estrella.
“Let’s give them the free ride, let’s give them amnesty right now, what are we gonna do with the next group,” she adds.
To that, Estrella responds that we should want to be a society that welcomes others.
“Do we really want to be the type of people that kind of throw the towel and say, ‘let’s get them all out?’ Or do we say, ‘yes let’s give them amnesty and if it comes to another point where there’s other people that want to come here, another problem, we’re gonna fix that too.’ We’re supposed to welcome in people.”
Lori then shifts the blame onto Estrella’s parents, asking her why they didn’t do it “by the book” and become legal citizens themselves.
“I don’t know about my parents and this isn’t really about my parents, this is about me and that’s why us Dreamers are out there,” Estella answers. “This is where I belong and it’s up to me.”
Lori retorts by saying it’s “crappy” that her parents immigrated with her illegally.
“I’m throwing them under the bus. My parents made sure and their parents made sure that we didn’t have to go through this. You know I’d be pretty damn mad at them,“ Lori, who divulged that her grandparents were Italian immigrants, argues.
But Estrella remains steadfast that she doesn’t blame her parents for immigrating with her to America illegally and that they were just trying to give her the best life possible.
“I felt that my parents were trying to protect me when they brought me over here. They wanted me to come over here and be the first one in my family that’s a female to go to college and to have an actual job and to be an actual person and not just a statistic,” Estrella says, adding that while she is registered and has a DACA card and work permit.
Estella then acknowledges Lori’s family’s immigration journey and pleads with her to find some empathy for her own family’s struggle, adding that before DACA she couldn’t even be public about her immigrant status.
“I was hiding because who I was, was a ‘criminal,’ and I don’t want to talk about my parents, it’s about me. have to wait to see what happens in Congress because I’m DACA,” she says.
“I’m gonna be the first to one to go, I’m gonna have to say goodbye to my job, say goodbye to my dream — and I’ve worked so hard.”
In the end, the pair seemingly exchange thoughtful goodbyes, with Lori wishing Estrella “all the best,” with her dream and Estrella saying she hopes one day she won’t have to worry about her status in this country.
However, after the conversation, Estrella said that while she knew people who are against DACA existed, she felt “disgusted” having to hear these things said to her face.
Lori said that while she felt Estrella’s pain, she believes deportation could be a “wonderful experience.”
“They call us dreamers for a reason. Because we dream of a better life and I know that we’re going to make it a reality,” Estrella sums her case up.
And last month, Democrats introduced a bill in the house that may make Estrella’s dream come true.
HR 6, also called the Dream and Promise Act, combines a new version of the DREAM Act — a legalization bill for undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children which failed to pass in Congress last year — with a proposal to allow some immigrants with Temporary Protected Status to apply for legal status.
