Eric, what's Matty?
So I want you to watch this TikTok It's by Rafael Basquez that goes by Raphael's insights on TikTok. It's a terror card reading in the video, he's predicting or he's asking the cards what will happen with DOCCA? These guys like Walter Mercado. But for Zoomers, Okay.
The card of the justice is the first card. Obviously, the justice tends to be the courts, the justice tends to be tends to be anything related towards legal issues. But the sun is coming out, so that actually says that there's going to be good news coming in terms of DOCCA. And the star continues to dominate DOCCA, which says DOCCA continues.
Oh wow, I mean DOCTA continues. Where do you want from the waltermercan right.
You know, it's kind of endearing to see videos like these after all these years of DACA and the way I see it, this video is an exercise of hope and it speaks to living under an unpromised future with DACA. Folks online are finding their own ways to build and find hope and connecting even when progress for the undocumented community can feel hopeless. The point is today DOCCA is part of people's everyday routine. Like our parents watch Walter
Marcalo when we were kids. DACA recipients have videos like these, and compared to twenty twelve when the program started, there are so many more resources on social media now where people talk about it casually or urgently. Sometimes videos are about the emotional weight of being undocumented, but other times it's just a terror card prediction about the program's fate.
Do you think he's right about Docca's future.
I hope.
So this is Out of the Shadows, a podcast about America's tangled history of immigration. I'm Patti Rodriguez 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 undocumentary 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.
Almost every form of social media has been a tool for Dreamers, and on this episode, we're going to break down how that has evolved, for better or for worse, and why it was so important since the start of the Dreamer movement.
I started blogging in two thousand and four, basically when I joined my Space.
That's Erek Guerta, an organizer from LA His blog was an intimate look at the life of an undocumented team. It was his personal diary.
I ended up creating a blogger account, realizing like, I can't just keep putting all my business on MySpace.
I need a whole, separate place to put my business.
I think it's fair to say that the Dreamer movement was born on the Internet. Initially, it was a place for young undocumented folks to come out of the shadows. Some would do it anonymously, but so many others shared their identities hoping their stories inspired others, or at the very least let other undocumented teens know that they weren't alone. As we've heard this season, there was power and visibility.
It started with blogs and forums, people bearing their experience with the world, sharing raw emotions of living with constant uncertainty. Dreamers found their community online and quickly learned to organize and mobilize. For people like Wedeta, it was a place to vent his frustrations with being undocumented.
It was a good practice for me because at the time I was enrolled in journalism it used to community college, so it gave me a form of practice my writing and you know, being on the computer and typing. And it was also very therapeutic, you know, just you know, vomiting my mind and my thoughts on how I felt about being undocumented.
In certain situations, he'd purge his thoughts and feelings and share it with the internet, giving other undocumented folks tips and advice on how to navigate the world.
I would write, you know, blog posts in terms of like this is explaining how an undocumented.
Person could travel within.
The United States, how to basically turn into that like as a documented this is this is how I navigate the system, and I'm going to tell you you know how I do it.
It was also a place to talk about news that impacted dreamers.
I wrote about how I felt when the dreamt failed in twenty ten, how I felt when Dhaka passed in twenty twelve, certain life poates in my life happened, and that blog.
Became my personal diarity event all of that stuff. So and all the time I've done it, like the blog accomplished what I was hoping to do in the first place, was to just put that energy out there and hope that other folks would find it.
And other people did find it. They found me on social media, they started their own blogs, they started, you know, kind of doing their own thing. But as we see with so many side hustles and projects that folks start, not everybody keeps them going or even finishes them. So for me, that became very clear right away that as I started becoming that dude who writes and blogs about being undocumented, I was like, cool, now there's a certain responsibility to keep this going as much as I can.
By the end of the two thousands, Facebook and Twitter became the platforms for dreamers to share their Lives for organizer more of the LA. Social media was one of the early ways he started getting involved.
Being sort of like part of the generation that sort of grew up with online messenger and like building online communities, it was very easy to be anonymous, and so coming at it from sort of that standpoint, we were able to sort of get our feet wet. Like one of the first things that we did sort of in our online space was we created an organization called dream Activist, and it was myself and five other people that all
met sort of on this online forum. And so one of the first projects that we undertook was we sort of recognized the importance of telling our stories and it was very convenient because again we could be anonymous, use whatever name we wanted. Things like that.
Some like film critic Carlos, we're still hesitant to tell the public about their status. Before the Dreamer movement, Carlos felt most people saw being undocumented as an abstract concept, like a magical unicorn that only exists in the constant media cycle.
I sort of came out as an undocumented person before twenty seventeen. I wouldn't tell people that I was on document in or DOCCA because I feel like, I think like before that happened, most people didn't even know what DACCA was. It wasn't like the in the sort of like you know, collective awareness. People you know were still saying illegal instead of undocumented, and so I just wouldn't engage with that, you know.
Unlike many of the Hollywood movies Carlos reviewed, being undocumented was actually based on true events. So when the Trump administration ended DOCA in twenty seventeen, social media continued to be a big avenue to share the DOCA experience. Carlos shared his truth.
I wrote a post that outlets later picked up about how playing that you know that I was a DOCTA recipient that I'm undocumented and whatnot? Because I felt like for a lot of people in the industry, in creative industries and in these worlds, the notion of undocumented people is such a hypothetical thing, like far away they think of them of like, oh, they're like the gardener or the person in the kitchen staff, and that's very valid, and you know, I sort of like there's nothing to
be a shame of there. But I feel like a lot of people don't know someone that's undocumented in their personal lives and face to face, it's sort of like, you know, an outsider, hypothetical thing that I don't have to think about.
Trump's policies had direct effects on Carlos's life. If he lost his work permit, he wouldn't be able to review films. He wanted people to understand that DOCA was his livelihood and the Trump administration threatened that.
And so for me, it was the kind of important to let my colleagues and people in the industry that respected me or care for me, to let them know that this thing that Trump was doing was directly affecting someone that they knew, to sort of like bring it closer to them, Like you think of this issue as something that's flying in the air that doesn't affect you, but you know me, and if you care about me, then you just care about this issue because you know,
this thing that was happening politically was directly affecting me.
And so once I sort of came out, you know, as that and sort of like I told people and became more vocal about it, I felt like other people understood and like, you know, gave me spaces to talk about it and to write about it, and so the challenge was sort of like coming out and saying it and letting people know that that recipients and documentary people are in all sorts of different places and you know, jobs and are pursuing careers in front of the camera,
behind the camera, right in about movies, in every sort of like field.
DOCA still exists online, but the pandemic changed everything, even the way dreamers fight for the rights. That's after the break.
When the pandemic hit in twenty twenty and things started closing down, DOCCA recipients and immigrant advocates took to TikTok. They shared their experiences, their fears, or any recent information surrounding DACA. TikTokers continue to keep people informed about everything surrounding immigration.
My name is Raquel Fernandez go Forth and I'm an immigration lawyer in North Carolina. My parents are from Venezuela. They came to the un in nineteen eighty nine and I was born here.
After she graduated law school, Raquel thought she'd be helping immigrants like her mom, but that wasn't the case. It all felt so impersonal, and she started questioning if this was her calling after all.
When I graduated law school, I took the bar, and then after that I immediately started working at a pretty big law firm. But I noticed, how, you know, there are so many cases and sometimes people don't get the best service. The practice of law is something completely different than what it is in theory. So when you see that, starting off as a lawyer, you're like, oh, man, you know you may work at one law firm and think
this is how it is everywhere. So I kind of got a little discouraged right off the bat, like, man, I don't really want to practice law this way. The whole point of becoming an immigration lawyer is to help immigrants, and I don't want to feel like iggy about it, you know what I mean.
So I ended up leaving.
That law firm and went into like eDiscovery, So it was like helping review contracts, review discovery documents for trials, and that was a lot easier, but it wasn't my calling, you know. I knew that I still wanted to advocate for immigrants, so I used social media in that way, especially TikTok, because before that I wasn't really I mean, I would post about things, but I wasn't really being an advocate.
She does her part by sharing vital information for immigrants because she saw her mother struggle with lawyers. That's why her videos are always bilingual.
When TikTok came around during the pandemic, I was like, Okay, I'm going to start talking about DACA. And that was the first video that I made because it was around the time that Doc Go went too the Supreme Court. So I made a TikTok video.
It went viral.
I continued doing that and then obviously expanded onto different areas of immigration and ever since then, it's just been a huge platform that I've been able to use for this purpose.
Raquel stays up to date on all the latest DACA happenings. One topic that she's been talking about a lot lately is the injunction put in place by a district court in Texas that prevents more eligible Dreamers from applying for DACA.
So the injunction that Andrew Hannon has put in place, it ended up saying that DHS to the Department of Homeland Security and USCIS does not have the authority to make decisions on DACA.
These tiktoks reflect the DACA of its time, and folks like Raqual provide a public service to inform their audience. In some tiktoks, she touches on how Biden factors into the program's current concerns.
So at this.
Point, you know, all those initial applications, since I believe it was twenty twenty one, they just they're in limbo. They can't decide what happens with those until they determine the legality of DACA. So the Biden administration ended up going with and creating a new rule to try to do the process the right way. But at this point
that's only protecting those who currently have DAKA. So they need to look at Biden's rule and determine if that now straightens things out, you know, to put it in Layman's terms, and if that can finally preserve DACA, not only for current recipients, but for initial recipients.
Raquel likes to keep an optimistic mind, but she thinks this needs to be resolved so these folks can move on with their lives.
I am an optimistic person, but currently with Judge Andrew Hannen, based on his history, it may be something that goes to the Supreme Court, he may not rule in favor of initial DOCA applicants, which is something that is terrible because I see and know so many people personally who should have DOCA at this point, but because of the injunction, dhs USCIS can't accept or deny the applications that are pending,
so they're just in limbo. And I mean at this point, I just want him to make his decisions so we can move along the process. If it's going back to the Supreme Court, we need a final decision and this roller coaster needs to end. So I feel like the most optimistic outlook is for the decision from Andrew Hannen to be made as soon as possible so we can continue moving forward and we can finally put.
An end to this.
But all this information can be a lot to process, even for the TikTokers who are breaking the down for the community, and that comes with a lot of emotional baggage. More on that after the break.
That guy's eleven years old. Today's experience is not the same, and it reflects cultural shifts like the focus on mental health. While Dreamers that were involved in demonstrations were brave, there was also a mental toll. Take for example, the Dream nine, the group of immigrants that self deported to Mexico. The action was meant to bring attention, but the skull hours of that are still very much present. Here's one of the Dream nine, Lizabeth Matteo on her experience.
I'm pretty sure I was depressed the whole time, and I was broken the whole time. Whether I became more broken as I was organizing or was already rocket before, I don't know.
I had uncles that had been deported, I had family members, friends that I'd an impacted by the mutation systess, and I always thought, how there, you know, how there does the government do this to those people that can defend themselves.
For people like Guerta, his DACA status lives on his social media bio. As he's getting older, he settled into his immigration status. Well, there's still uncertainty of living in Daca Limbo. It's just another part of his life, like doing taxes or waiting in traffic.
On my bio. I'm quasi undocumented because I'm no longer.
Fully undocumented, but I'm not also fully documented either because I got a chicken, you know, like some wady on probation every two years with the government and saying Look, here's my Space subs.
I haven't been in trouble. I've been paying my taxes. Please, sir, can I have some more data? Yeah, every two years.
But as we all grow older and we move on with our lives, it's suddenly for me, I can personally say, it's no longer like a lynchpin in my identity or in how my life revolves. Right, It's just an annoying thing I have to do, like fucking go to the DMV every couple of years and stand in line for an awkward picture for my driver's license.
He's come to terms with his status in some ways. He's been in this fight from the very beginning and has noticed the difference in the use of social media today. For one, there's more of it.
The program itself has pretty much been frozen right in terms of like who can apply and who qualifies, but the culture behind like being undocumented has shifted tremendously, Like so many more folks are open about it, so many more resources are available, not just in academic spaces, but just like in life spaces.
There's like being Undocumented memes, and there's like a whole new generation of folks coming in and making this movement their own, because I'm for sure not involved in it anymore. And anyway, I ain't no use.
I'm just a dude from all heights, right, I'm just a regular shregular dude. I'm not out here like winning titles or anything. So you know, it's dope that the movement is still growing and it's still going with the new generation of taking it on.
As a reflection of the current culture, TikTok and Instagram are where undocumented folks publicize the mental health impact of living in limbo. As of this recording, that's almost eleven years of living with this uncertainty. The silver lining is that they'll always have a community online, and having that comes in handy when your future is in constant flux. When DOCA ended temporarily, for example, TikTok and Instagram became place to vent.
Today is definitely one of the hardest day of my life because June already began, which means that the Supreme Court will release the decision about DACA this month, and there's a possibility that it might be next week, and it's so scary, so scary to know that literally everything you worked hard for can be taken away. From you in one instant.
Some prefer to take a journalistic approach, breaking down questions for the current generation, like what.
Is DACA program?
That I explainat our videos can be an aspirational call to action.
I'm undocumented and I want to build a billion dot O company, but not because.
I want to build a villain do the company, but because I want to break my community with me.
Yah. I think we should all be millionaires.
Or even artistic expression. Some folks made music about their DAKA status. WHOA, that's Miss Lily, a rapper from Pennsylvania real name Lilia Anglica Sanchez Perez and her song La Frontera, which she posted on Instagram back in twenty twenty one. She speaks of her and her community's resilience, identity, and the pursuit of the American dream in English and Spanish, and you can hear in her voice the clear frustration of living in limbo, growing up in the shadows, constantly
confronted with the fear of deportation. That is how many DOCA recipients find each other, whether with music, memes or sharing vulnerable moments. Under a snippet of Natalia lagades asta la rais they are turning their pain and uncertainty into poetic expressions that resonate with audiences across the Internet. Most
of the time, I don't think social media matters. But then the other day I went to the Japanese American Museum and they had photos from the Internment caps when they took the Japanese people living in the West Coast
and put them in these concentration caps. And what struck me the most about those images were that they were dressed so elegantly, like these people were business people, you know, they were shop owners, entrepreneurs, There were families, and like back then they didn't have social media, but had these photographers capturing these moments. And when I saw that, I think I really understood why social media is an important tool in the dreamer movement, because it is archiving what's
happening to us. And even if it doesn't make a difference like right now, in twenty years, thirty years, the future generations are going to learn from these archives what's been happening to us.
I mean, I think we all can agree that social media can affect our mental health, but I also understand, especially in our community, where we are not given the platforms. Social media has allowed us to create our own platform and share our stories. These images, these videos, these reels, these tiktoks. They put a face on the movement, on the experiences, on what individuals are going through at the moment.
You know, there was one video that I watched where it's the wife of a doctor recipients, the one recording this video. She is sharing her husband meeting his family for the first time. You can't help but be moved by that and then also get angry at the entire situation. I think that's what social media.
I hope helps.
With this movement, that it gets us angry. Doctor recipients feel the aches of being separated from family. Some social media advocates, like lawyer Raquel, encourage DOCTA recipients to apply for advance parol, allowing them to travel without a visa and reconnect with their family.
If I could just say one thing to anybody listening, if you have DOCA, currently use your advanced parole, if you haven't traveled on advanced parole, just in case if DOCA does go away, if you do have that legal entry, and let's say you end up marrying a US citizen or you have a kid who's a US citizen, and you know, we tend to think that DOCTA recipients are really young. There are doctor recipients that are like in their forties and now have kids who are nearing the
age of twenty one and can petition for them. They can become you know, their immediate relatives, so they can do adjustment of status as long as they have that legal entry. So something that I definitely say to anyone who has DOCA is use that advanced parole in order to travel. You can travel for one of three reasons. It can be humanitarian reason, which can be to visit your sick relatives, to visit a grave site. Let's say your grandparents died and you didn't get to say goodbye.
You want to go visit their grave site, or they have a ceremony, a funeral, whatever it may be. That's a humanitarian reason that you can use to travel. Also for educational reasons, for a semester abroad, employment reasons, you have a meeting to go to in another country, et cetera. Something that you can definitely use and be able to come back. Have that legal entry, and you never know in the future if that's something that can help you with adjustment of status.
While the fight for DOCA might have slowed down in recent years, young undocumented immigrants remained vocal about their status online. So while the messaging and platform might have shifted to its current, undocumented folks always know how to find their community.
DACA could still end today, even though it would cost billions to end and possibly cause a terair in the immigrant space. Time continue on in spite of an unresolved future. Some choose to have hope, and others believe that hope is a dangerous drug. DOCA is under threat, especially as anti immigrant sentiments have persisted beyond Trump. Most recently in twenty twenty three, a dangerous bill was signed in Florida by a potential presidential candidate.
And this law from Governor DeSantis. It basically says that anybody who is an undocumented person who has a driver's license that demonstrates that they're undocumented from their own state, that won't be recognized in the state of Florida. And initially, when it was just a bill, it seemed to be even greater. It seemed to be that any person who was transporting an undocumented person in their car could then get a fine and receive a felony.
In the season finale, we'll examine Daka's shaky future at a time when anti immigrant rhetoric is at an all time high. Special thanks to those creators that let us use their videos today, including rafay Elvaskaz, Emiliana Carlos, Eduardos Pina, Juan Maya Hernandez, and Jack Gerreto.
Out of the Shadows Dreamers is a Seinemeto production in partnership with Iheart'smichael Duda podcast Network. It's created, hosted, and executive produced by me, Patti Rodriguez, and Eric Galindo. This show is written by Sessa Hernandez and executive produced by Jaselle Banzis. Our supervising producer is Arlene Santana. It's produced and edited by Brianna Flores. Our associate producer is Claudia Marti Gorena down Design, mixing and mastering by Jessica cranechicch
and a special thanks to all our Dreamers. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share it For more Michael Duda podcast listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.