American Parents

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Lisa Martinez Rosas is standing in the security line at the airport in a border town. She an undocumented immigrant, so she's understandably nervous, but she has her doga card with her. It'll be fine, she reminds herself. An IE agent glances at her, so she looks away. When she looks again, he's walking directly toward her. Her body goes stiff, and she grips her DOCA card in her pocket, hoping he's walking towards someone else. Excuse me, ma'am, the agent says.

This is Out of the Shadows a podcast about America's tangled history of immigration.

Rodriguez I America Lindo.

Last season, we tackled Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighty six Amnesty Act. This season, we're tracing the origins of DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a contentious executive order to protect undocumented young people from being deported.

Issued by former President Barack Obama in twenty twelve. DACA was meant to be a temporary stop gap on a broken immigration system. It was like putting a bucket under a leaky roof, But with multiple Supreme Court challenges and looming presidential elections, the roof feels like it may collapse at any moment, impacting the US economy and American culture as we know it. Meanwhile, the future of millions of lives hangs in the balance.

Welcome to Out of the Shadows Dreamers. DACA only extended protection to a little under a million people, leaving out millions for reasons of age, felony status, or just plain bad luck. After the Obama administration kept hearing concerns about all the people that were left out of the program, the president had to do something. The biggest concern was for the parents of Dreamers and DACCA recipients. Organizers demanded that the president extend protection to them. Two years after

Now here's the thing. We expect people who live in this country to play by the rules. We expect that those who cut the line will not be unfairly rewarded. So we're going to offer the following deal.

Lupita Riola recalls the day Obama made the announcement. She tuned in with a lot of her friends and they all watched, hoping, as a parent of a Dreamer for some good news.

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Lupito was excited at the prospect that she'd be able to qualify for protection, but Her excitement was short lived as she kept watching.

If you've been in America for more than five years, if you have children who are American citizens or legal residents, if you register, pass a criminal background check, and you're willing to pay your fair share of taxes, you'll be able to apply to stay in this country temporarily without fear of deportation. You can come out of the shadows and get right with the law. That's what this deal is.

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Like the previous executive decision, DAPPA would defer deportation and granted work permit for three years, but not to the parents of Dreamers, only to those parents of American citizens or permanent residence. When Obama said no protections for people like her, Lupita says they started crying thinking about what could have been another example of the constant moving goalpost in the American immigration machine. When we come back more on DAPA.

At the top of the show, we told you about Graisa. She's the doctor recipient I was detained by ICE together with United we dreamed Gaysa actually had a direct hand in getting DAPA to Obama's desk.

DAPA was the first campaign that I ever led it's like the campaign that was the campaign of my dreams. I was the director of the campaign in the field, organizer for it, and it was this idea that like, if we had just went DACA and we've seen like how beneficial it was for ourselves in our community, like we should also expand that to our families, because they are the original dreamers, as we talked about.

Greisa was part of a mixed status family. She was born in the Mexican state of Iago, the oldest of four sisters, to Elia Rossas and Luis Martinez. When she was just seven years old, her parents brought the family to Dallas to pursue better futures for their daughters.

I still remember crossing the border and we had to cross the Rio Grande, and I remember what it felt like, how cold the water was and how scary it was. But you know, my parents told me that on the other side was safety opportunity. So we made that we held hands tight, and we made it to the other side.

And the investment in Graysa's prospects looked bright. In high school, she led walkouts to raise awareness for undocumented immigrants. She became a community activist, fighting for people like her parents, like herself and her three younger sisters. At Texas A and M, where she went to college, Gadisa founded the

I was on cloud nine.

I remember calling my mom that day and she started making plans about the business and she was going to open and the house that she was going to buy. I remember, we had learned so much about implementing DACA. We'd implemented DACA to ensure that millions of undocumented young people and their families had access to the applications, and so we knew exactly what to do because we had just done it.

While Obama made certain strides to address immigration, his administration ramped up RAID campaigns in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen in response to a huge surge of immigrants from Central America. It was a hard time for people who had benefited from some of Obama's policies but who saw how their community was being impacted by the raids.

I had a lot of things to say about that moment, and I remember being called to the White House to just process with people that had been supportive of us in that space. And as we were going into the White House, all of a sudden, I found myself sitting across the table from President Obama.

Imagine sitting across from the guy who's at the head of all of this DACA now DAPPA, but also at this time is deporting a shitload of people. That's where Todaysa found herself right across from Obama, and she wasn't happy.

He saw how.

Devastated we were.

And the only thing that I could think of in that moment was to say, you know, we're going to do our work to build political power to protect our people and to have more wins like this that cannot be pushed back by lawsuits. But like you missed, President, need to stop these raids.

And I was like, the most shaking thing that I've ever die like.

It was the most scary, scariest moment in my life at that point. But he heard me, and he understood, and you know, I was a reflection of the work that United Region has been doing for more than a decade now of stopping deportations and releasing people from the tension and ensuring that we're using our power and our voice and our privilege.

Another organizer he met with was Lupita's daughter, activist Erica Andiola, who also aired out her frustrations with his administration's constant raids and the New programs shortcomings, and Erica wasn't exactly polite when she encountered the president. Lubita says she and Erica met with Obama and Miami, and Erica was bold, rude, even challenging the President on Life TV, demanding to know what would happen to her mom Lupita now that she

Programmatas President.

Lubita says that when it was all over, Erica was still pissed and didn't want to shake Obama's hand. So when the President extended his hand to Erica gave him the cold shoulder, but Lubita elbowed her and reminded her of her manners, and Erica took his handshake begrudgingly. For the administration, these moments served as a reminder that issuing DACA and now DAPPA are both double edged swords for

And then we saw the Republicans and they filed their lawsuit against the program, and it just was a stand still. And that's when we first learned to fight through the courts at United Redream and so we put out like a big campaign to defend the DAPPA program in at the Supreme Court.

Texas among other states, quickly challenged DAPA in the courts, claiming that it violated the Constitution. A year later, in twenty fifteen, DAPPA was blocked while the suit continued. Then in twenty sixteen, in a split four or four court decision, the block remained.

Today all right.

Solicer General's standard ext to me argued the case strongly for the rule of law.

Crowds of organizers showed up to protest the decision. One reporter asked the Texas Attorney General if you wish the protesters showed up on behalf of them. He smugly answers, we're here.

Defending the constitution, and so whether we have people out here or not is not relevant.

Seeing DAPPA stricken down was a huge blow for Graysa who had to watch all her work being torn down by the courts.

Unfortunately, our Republicans won. I still remember the day of the decision, being outside of the Supreme Court and hearing the news of the outcome of the case and calling my mom and how sad she was and crying with her on the phone. It was also at the same time where during the Obama administration there were mass rates happening across the US.

Then, at the end of twenty sixteen, Donald Trump gets elected, sending a collective chill down every immigrant spine. Docca's future was immediately called into question. Trump had run on a platform of anti immigration, but confusingly sent mixed messages about DOCA. This is how Luis Cortes rometto, a lawyer and DACA beneficiary, remembers it.

So that was right when President Trump was inaugurated, and you know, we were all trying to see what he was going to do, because he said a lot of really anti immigrant things, but then he was going back and forth on DACA. He kept saying, you know, I'm going to treat dreamers with heart. I remember that selling, which he used because I was like, that's weird for him to say. We were trying to see what was up, but people still felt some type of way.

Aline Ronnie, author of Crossing Borders, was astounded by the manipulative way Trump used immigration.

I think President Trump's willingness to weaponize DACA just really mess with lives of hundreds of thousands of young people was probably it was probably the second ugliest thing that he did in the context of immigration. The ugliest thing is the cold hearted ruthlessness of separating families at the border. Right, that's far and away the worst thing. But the time and time again used DOCA recipients as some sort of a a chip to be played in a poker game.

It was really really disgusting, even celebrated legendary journalists. Maria Ina Jsa was uncertain about how things would play out with Trump in office.

I try not to be afraid of anything, really, but I was very clear that during the time that Donald Trump was president that at any time there could be a knock at my door.

In the first few months of Trump's tenure, in twenty seventeen, his Secretary of Homeland Security, John F. Kelly, formally rescinded DAPPA, leaving DACA in place for the moment. Out of the shadows. We'll be back after the break. Losing DAPA was heartbreaking for Graysa. Gisa sacrificed so much to make DAPA real for her mom, only for it to be stricken down by conservatives. She sacrificed her youth, her sanity, and she never got to see her mom, Elia Rossa's get protected status. Tragically,

I used to have that meriss and now I mostly have dreams. Mary Kava talks about the discipline of hope. You have to practice it, and it's not something that just comes at you. That hope is not shiny, pink, bubbly thing, but like hope has like mud on her face because she's been on a fighter too that she has like has to have felt strength. And so it's unfortunate that we have to be this resilient.

So that brings us to the end of Trump's first year in office, when he's finally made up his mind on what to do with DACA, and now our documented lawyer Luis Cortes Romelo is about to embark on a battle with the administration and the Supreme Court, taking up sword and shield on behalf of dreamers.

President Trump gets elected, he gets sworn in, and then at the beginning of February, so like a few weeks later, I get a call and it's from this guy named Tony and he said, hey, my brother Daniel, he has DACA and he just got picked up by ice outside President Trump and DOCCA. For everybody, now, the question is can the government in DACA just like that for hundreds of thousands of people.

That's next time on out of the shadows. Out of the shadows. Dreamers is a Semelo Production in partnership with Iheartsmichael Duda podcast Network. It's created, hosted, and executive produced by me, Patti Rodriguez and eric A Lindo. This show was written by Sessa Hernandez and executive produced by Jaselle Bancis. Our supervising producer is Arlene Santana. It's produced and edited by Brianna Flores. Our associate producer is Claudia Marti Gorena.