It's May seventeen, twenty ten, a sweltering, dry Monday in Arizona. By noon, the temperature climbed to ninety degrees, pretty typical weather for the Sonoran Desert. But this is not your typical day, because something incredible is about to go down. In Senator John mckein's office in Tucson, five brown college kids dressed in blue caps and gowns enter his office and stage an old school sit in. It's a bold move. They are essentially trespassing and at risk of getting arrested
or even worse. The pressure is so much that one of the protesters bows out, leaving just four Braula Caraca, Lisbeth Matteo, Mohammed mo Abdullahi, and Jahira Ca. They sit smiling with legs crossed, urging Senator McCain to support the Dream Act, a bill that would, among other things, create a pathway to legalization for undocumented immigrants. You see, McCain had previously supported the bill, but at this point it's considering a run for president, and pulled his support to
try and please the Republican's conservative base. The protesters refuse to leave until McCain agrees to flip flop back to supporting the bill, even when security comes, even when the police come, they hold.
Their position.
Until finally the four college kids are arrested. It's a powerful move and a brave one because three of the four protesters risking their safety for the rights of immigrants are themselves undocumented. Lizbeth, mo Yahida, all of whom are undocumented, knew that they could be arrested. They knew they might get deported. They planned for it. They knew how it would look to deport peaceful students demanding rights. And it's not that they weren't scared, but it was their way
of telling the world to care about their struggle. They wanted people to pay attention to the Dream Act and how it could change their lives. It was a tool to create pressure on elected officials to please God, do something, do something about this country's broken immigration system.
I'm Patti Rodriguez and I'm Mary Glendo.
This is Out of the Shadows, a podcast America's Tangled History of immigration. 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 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 can collapse at any moment, impacting the US economy, American culture as we know it. Meanwhile, the future of millions of lives hang in the balance. Welcome to out of the shadows, Dreamers.
Eric.
Do you remember March in two thousand and six.
Yeah, I was covering it from my community college newspaper, the Talent Marks. Yeah.
And I was there too, covering it for the radio morning show. And for those who don't remember, the protests began in response to a proposed legislation that would raise penalties for legal immigration and classify undocumented immigrants and anyone who helped them enter into the US as felons.
I didn't even know that back then, to be honest, all I knew was it was a day without a Mexican and we were all going to go to downtown La.
Oh, and we all came together.
That's right, over one.
Million people just in downtown Los Angeles.
It was just in LA So it was all over the country. They were doing it.
Yeah, and this is written in history as the largest protest ever because these are the parents of the Dreamers who were fighting for their humanity. I believe these marchas in two thousand and six is what inspired the Dreamers to see the power in numbers, to see that they were not alone in this fight, and maybe in a way gave them the courage to come out of the shadows themselves.
Yeah, it was definitely a moment for sure. The history of immigrants organizing during that time was like a Gordian knot, or like pulling out wired headphones from your pocket. It's tangled.
Well.
The Dreamer movement is so closely tied to the Dream Act and education. The Six Marches were like an incubator for the movement. Sure, people marched to end a different bill, but it was a coalition of immigrants of all kinds, a united front of millions.
The Dreamers had already they had already been coalescing as a community.
That's the one and only Mightysa, a Mexican American Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and host of the hit PRX radio show Latino USA.
Why because what would happen is that you know, they would end up in college if they were able to. And then their identification, whether they were from Africa or Korea or Venezuela or Argentina. One of their primary identifiers was to be an undocumented student. And they formed those allegiances right across ethnicities, race, cultural backgrounds, national identities. And this to me is kind of extraordinary about the Dreamer movement.
It is, yes, in many ways a Latino Latina LATINX movement in Tendido, but it is also encompassing of all immigrants, right and refugees, and there's no race upon which that is only dedicated to them, right, So I think that was really really powerful.
Laganan Mancha was like someone sent out a bat signal to the Latin diaspora across the US.
And I think that again, the marches in like Chicago, Dallas, LA. The marches that stood out half a million people in Chicago, half a million people in Dallas, Dyosmil. I think it was close to a million in LA.
In New York. It was smaller, but what it was in New York was Dodo.
Mundo laganon Mancha helped kill a bill that would have made undocumented people in the US felons. And it showed the power of community and of organizing a little fire that many people hope would change immigration policies in a big way, maybe even lead to the dreamac passing. But as we say, history isn't that simple.
What I'm really haunted and obsessed by is the capacity of this country, and it's in humanity towards people who were simply were not born in this country. And then you have a reality in terms of the immigrant experience, which is that you are not only less than human, but you are also labeled illegal.
In two thousand and seven, on the anniversary of the Six Marches, hundreds of thousands of immigrants still shut up to protest on May Day in California. The protest ended with police attacking peaceful protesters, many of whom were families with children. So just imagine for a minute, you're pleading for humanity, peacefully holding your innocent child's hand, and the police respond with swinging batons and a rapid fire of
rubber bullets. The protesters were pleading for a solution on the issue of immigration and demanding the end of workplace raids and deportations. By two thousand and eight, the protesting flames started to dim a bit, but thousand still marched in May, especially in Milwaukee. Messages plastered on signs demanded the end of raids. The US supported close to three hundred thousand people in seven, close to a fifty percent increase.
The protestant marches also flirted up anti immigrant groups such as Numbers USA, whose membership numbers went from one hundred thousand to six hundred thousand. But the marches had an impact, as Antonio vi Ja Ragosa, Eli's may at the time asked DHS to end the workplace rates, citing in a study that fifty percent of those deported we're working in local industries and could create further harm on the economy.
By two thousand and nine, the protesters took it to a more sophisticated level by coordinating civil disobedience through Internet communities and text messages. Again, I want to emphasize that the undocumented students let the fight for immigration reform for themselves, and they were bold Mahmie.
Eric Guadata was one of those organizers.
We called ourselves Dreamers because you were trying to pass lesislation that was called the Dream Act.
So it made it easier and it made it ring in people's minds, right, especially when you're talking of politicians who are always getting yelled at for so many different things that oh shit, I remember those who Those are the dreamers.
Who came to my office and got arrested. Those are the dreamers who came here when they were like babies and they assimilated to society, but they're still undocumented. So it was it was a double edged sword because for so many years in the beginning of the movement, we were pushing the dream bag right, like this is the legislation, this is the bill that is going to fix everything, all the way up until twenty ten. So up after twenty ten, like that just became part of the lexicon.
He went, is the dreamer movement grow in real time and the organizing became more and more frequent.
So in terms of the way the movement grew, in terms of like doing non violent actions and figure out different ways to get people's attention or just to put people's day up.
We escalated over the years in terms of cool, We're gonna have a teaching cool, We're gonna have a community media cool, We're gonna have an open house.
Each time the event gets bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more.
Personal, to the point that when documented students started about doing civil disobedience and getting arrested, and that's when like should just stop off in terms of like.
Now we are thinking about what's going to happen.
At one point the organizers started worrying that they were being watched by the cheese muscles at the FBI.
Were you going to be monitored? And in many ways I think we were.
Especially just because of the nature of things when, especially when you get arrested in front of the federal headquarters in the West Side, when you start fucking with like the FBI and at the time too President Obama and the presidential office, you're gonna have eyes on you no matter what.
So whether anything happened from that, I don't know.
But there were instances right where we could just like point to each other and be.
Like, your phone's not working right, Yeah, no, my phone sounds weird, Like we're not getting any reception, you know, weird phone calls things like that, like trying to trying to figure out if we've seen that person before a meeting.
Before and who are they?
And as many you know, news organizations have proved over these last couple of years, especially with the Black Lives Matter movement, that there is a modern day hotel pro happening, and you know, activist spaces are being metiltrated and they are being you know, turned into against folks to criminalize them. So it wasn't the same as it is today, but for sure it was a concern to be monitored.
But even still, what all these fears and pressures, Maria, I know, hoos success. They put themselves in harm's way to fight. When I saw the activists do that ridiculously bold move of going over and taking over brock Obama's campaign offices, whoa I mean, talk about putting your body on the line, talk about giving it your all selflessness, of sacrifice for the greater good, and of a brilliant political move.
Frankly was extraordinary.
A year later, in twenty ten, the Dream Act was up for a vote again. That same year, dreamers showed up at the offices of politicians to demand its passage. We'll hear from them after the break.
Twenty ten was a huge year for the Dreamer movement. The Dream Act was up for a vote again. It's still guaranteed a path to legalization for immigrant children who got here before the age of sixteen. This was going to be the year it passed, and the Dreamers did everything in their power to ensure that. Lizabeth Matteo, one of the undocumented protesters from the top of the show, had been organizing for years advocate for the bill, and her involvement grew when she found her community.
I was at that first meeting when United was being was formed as an organization. That's where I met Muhammad and other undocumented against people.
She's referring to. Mohammed mo Abdullahi, another one of the protesters who donned a cap and gown with Lizabeth.
I got involved in immigration stuff just sort of from like a selfish place, which is I needed something that would help myself as someone who was undocumented lived here since I was three years old.
Moe's an undocumented immigrant from Iran. He and his family have been living in an arbor since he was three. His fear of deportation was even more pronounced because he feared he'd face a worse fate in Iran as a gay man.
I think the first time, my mom just told me that there's something called the Dream Act, but not to google it because the police would find us. And so the first thing I did is I googled it and found out that there was a community of folks just like myself that were online trying to advocate for the Dream Act.
Yet despite that anxiety, he still felt compelled to get involved. It was scarier to be left in limbo. Mo became an activist after he applied to enroll at Eastern Michigan University and wasn't accepted because of his status, even though he had saved up enough money that led him to become a Dreamer, although they weren't calling it that yet.
So when I found out about dream BacT, it was two thousand and seven, maybe late two thousand and six, Yeah, yeah, it was close to the end of two thousand and six is when I first found out about it and sort of got involved, just online, sort of a community talking to other undocumented folks, not too much activism and the Dreamer name. We were initially calling it Dreamy with
an Ie and then point it turned into Dreamer. One of the first projects that we undertook was we sort of recognized the importance of telling our stories and so we just reached out to other Dreamers. Hey, this can be anonymous, you can use whatever nickname you want. It's important for people to know that we exist and that were their friends, coworkers, neighbors, and so that was sort of like the first project that we took up in the Shadows.
After Mo and Lizbeth met, they strategized on how to get people to care about the bill. But there was one moment that inspired that McCain action. One of the United with Dream members, Matias Ramos, was detaining the Minnesota Airport. It became a crisis and eventually he was released from removal proceedings to different action. Moe wanted to recreate that anxiety and blis size it to the world, which brings us back to McCain's office.
I remember calling Lizabeth, I think one day, saying like, hey, let's get ourselves arrested and let's like recreate this moment of fear with everyone where they think, like, oh my god, these folks are going to get deported, what can we do? And so being in control of the action, our plan was we were going to tell everyone ignore us, call
for the passage of the Dream Act. And so yeah, we essentially put together a plan of let's find people that are regionally diverse from different parts of the country that are leaders, and the five or six of us, let's get arrested and essentially put ourselves into deportation. Proceeds to recreate sort of that like Matias simulation.
The protesters were intentional with their messaging. They knew what kind of message the cap and gowns would send. It was calculated symbolism that wisdom.
Now you're resting students, you know, Now you're arresting people that just want to study, that want to go to college. I mean, if you present this sort of image to you who present this story, as long as there's media attention, as long as people are connected and organizing, because that's the point that we wanted to make. If you've become involved, if you organize, you're going to be more safe as opposed to if you item it yourself.
There's power in numbers and hiding and playing sight.
Because if I come knocking on your door, no one is going to know, but we'll use that symbolism because that is something that I think grabs people's attentions to just saying, okay, this is where we start to start with the young people. Look with this government is doing. Look what this country is doing, tearing families apart. Now, obviously we're adults, we're not we're not children anymore. But using that they happen down was just symbols.
But they were still arrested.
Some of us were put in remotle proceedings. But the reason we did that was because we knew that. And then documenting young people, the community that we have formed was ready to fight and could actually stop our own vacation.
Now it was up to Congress. The Dream Act made it through the House, but it was blocked by a Republican dominated Senate, and once again the bill died flailing on the Senate floor. The final vote was fifty five to forty one and needed five more votes to clear the sixty vote threshold. Five bruh no moments that created even more pressure for immigration reform. Shit was about to get very real for Elizabeth and mow. They knew they had to keep the pressure up.
When the Dream Act vote failed. We were all very sort of like content. It was like we knew this
was going to happen. I know there was people in our group that were obviously disheartened and sad, but I think our take on it was like this is never going to pass, and we need to focus on something that's essentially what became the base of NIA for empowerment, education and escalation, and not so much being focused on legislation per se, but rather creating sort of the community that can surpass anything, including getting legislation.
The McCain sit in was like a soft launch for their own group.
A month later, we formed the movie Aliance. We had already then a student or actually several sit ins. We're undocumented young people essentially forced the government to arrest us. In my course, I mean like weak challenge. So as a result of that, we continued to do more and more. I think we will call it radical. I don't necessarily life dot work. We were just kind of dramatizing what
was already happening in our community. Young people were being detained and deported, parents were being detained and reported in families, the entire family was being destroyed. So we wanted to use the privilege that we had as a documently young people. This is before back off first and know that we were a more sort of protected class. If, if you will, if we were actually willing to organize and share our.
Stories, it was time for Obama to act out of the shadows will be back after the break. After losing Congressional support following Obamacare, Obama conceded on the issue of deportation. The administration couldn't get the Dream Act through in twenty ten, and Congress members started to press for some relief of Dreamers. In twenty eleven, John Morden, the Director of ICE, issued a memo announcing a highlight program expanding prosecutorial discretion. Remember
that from the first episode. That's the secret policy that John Lennon's lawyer, Leon Wilds found. While prosecutorial discretion is legalese for deferred action anyway, scholars referred to it as the Morton Memo, but it wasn't just one memorandum, but a series of them. By twenty twelve, the reviews from the pilot program in Denver and Baltimore revealed that most undocumented cases were low priority and focus could be shifted to more serious offenders or criminals.
Obama's team discussed with immigrant organizations and advocacy groups on how to best implement different action on a larger scale. Critics called it backdoor amnesty. Obama couldn't get the dreamac through Congress because Republicans controlled Congress, but with so many immigrants in limbo, the pressure cooker was swhistling aggressively.
What this country witnessed with the movement of the Dreamers really is extraordinary. It is not, in any way, shape or form given the credit that it deserves in terms of being an essential part of the greater civil rights movement of the United States of America.
You know, folks are getting arrested. Folks who are pushing people that they're in their offices, were getting arrested in campaign offices, were doing everything they could to pressure Obama behind the scenes and in front of the cameras and the part of public opinion to push them to be like you've been reporting all these people, you know, try to say, save your reputation, try to do something right.
With that power you have.
I am very disappointed Congress wasn't able to pass the Dream Act so we can stop punishing kids for the actions of their parents and allow them to serve in the military or earn an education and contribute their talents to the country where they grew up.
On the next episode of Out of the Shadows, Obama announces DACA, But who really made it happen? We explore that and more next time Out of the Shadows. Dreamers is a Semelo production in partnership with Iheartsmichael Duda podcast Network. It's created, posted, and executive produced by me, Patti Rodriguez, and Eric Galindo. This show is written by Sessa Hernandez an executive produced by Jiselle Vancis. Our supervising producer is
Arlene Santana. It's produced and edited by Brianna Flores. Our associate producer is Claudia Marti GRENA sound is so mixing and mastering by Jessica Cranechitch and a special thanks to all our Dreamers. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share it. For more Michael Duda podcasts, listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.