DACA recipients are trapped in Trump's limbo

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I'm Gene Demby, and I'm joined today by Hamanah Bustillo. What's good, Hamanah? Hey, Gene. You all have heard Hamanah on the podcast before. Today, though, we are talking about some huge changes to American immigration policy that will likely affect hundreds of thousands of people who live in the U.S. And people who are not here illegally. Yeah, you know, if you are an immigrant in the United States

or looking to come to the United States, there is, you know, at least one agency that you are most likely. to run into. And that is the U.S. citizenship and immigration services, also known as U.S.C.S. And sometimes they call it CIS, but it's not like the forensics side. CIS. CSA. So wait, U.S.

CIS, they're the people you would have to interface with to handle your residency in the United States if you were not born here, right? Yes. So they give you a green card. They are the one that says that you can be a U.S. citizen. They also are what give people work permits and various visas. And so, you know, if you are looking to be in the United States legally, if you're looking to do that, quote, unquote, right way, U.S.CIS is often the main keeper of that, quote, unquote, right way. Gotcha, gotcha.

Can I ask you a very dumb question? Is a green card actually green? I think it has some green in it. Just looking at edges. You know, your friend is a little tint. Green tinted, green card. Green card is easy to say. So USCIS is the people you'd had to interface with to handle, you.

your residency in the United States if you were not born here. Yeah, traditionally. I mean, we are seeing the second Trump administration really change a lot of the focus of USCIS to be a lot more restrictive. So the most recent example of this is in May there was a policy memo giving USCIS officers who are reviewing these applications for legal permanent residency. and see the discretion that if someone didn't go back to their home country to apply for this green card, that could be a reason to deny it. Wow.

The law hasn't changed. But this policy memo really freaked people out because it sounds like they want to make it harder for people to be approved for a green card. Okay. So they're tightening the screws on people who want to stay in the country via green cards, right? Yeah, via green cards and via just about anything else. I mean, USCIS is in the process of revetting refugees that had already been admitted into the country. And then they put a pause on almost all immigration applications from anyone that came from one of 39 countries that currently has a travel ban in the United States, which means that if you were born in one of those 39 countries but you're a student, a worker or a green card holder applying for citizenship. You might need to be renewing something or you might need to be applying for something.

And for many people, that is not getting renewed and those applications are not being touched. And then there's DACA. And then there's different action for childhood arrivals. And so quick explain to story, comma, DACA was an attempt to create some kind of provision for kids who came here when they were really, really young. Like to have some sort of protections to stay in the country because they've basically grown up here in the United States. this is the only place they know. And DACA does not give them legal status, but it does protect them from deportation

and allows them to move to the world on all these ways. Right. And DACA recipients, like folks with other types of, you know, engagement with USCIS, have to renew their status regularly every two years, in fact. So they have to renew, renew, renew, renew. Every two years, for the last 14 years, they pay hundreds of dollars to renew their DACA.

Wow. However, that has changed. Under this Trump administration, there has been a huge slowdown of processing at USCIS. What that means for people who rely on something like DACA for not just the deferred action, but also their work permit, which is a separate form, they have to re-up every two year, is that that has an expiration date, a very exact expiration date. And once you hit that date, if your DACA is not renewed, you are completely undocumented. You have no legal status. And to be clear, DACA is not legal status. So that's what sets this group apart from other groups.

But it is stripping the permission to legally do things in the country and the ability to be protected, in theory, from immigration enforcement actions against you. Hmm. And, Hamanah, you've been talking to folks who are facing the uncertainty of a dockless life in the very near future, possibly. And people have been renewing, as you said, very regularly. who are now caught in this sort of purgatory. It's so hard to be living not only in constant limbo, but with this level of hypervigilance, that no matter what you do,

there are outside factors that can wreck your life with a blink of an eye. It's just really, really frustrating, and just like I don't want to be a 40-year-old undocumented person in this country after all the stuff that I've done. So that's what Hemanah is walking us through on this episode. What it's like to live a life in limbo as the Trump administration moves to make it harder to become an American

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the expense report writes themselves. It's really about making it go from something that takes time and energy to something that provides delight. And once we had that, we knew that we had the beginnings of something incredible. Visit concur.com slash complete to learn more. This message comes from Angie, tackling a home project. Angie can connect you with pros who do such a good job you might ask them to be your kid's godfather. Don't do that. Just trust them to get the job done. Find a Pro for your projects at Angie.com. That's A-N-G-I.com. So I was able to go to Arizona and talk with people who are in various stages of their DACA renewals.

So folks who have already renewed, have seen the laps, have gotten it back, people who are currently in that lapse and are out of work. And then I also spoke with people like Raina Montoya and Jose Patino. who have their renewals in January, 27, but are now already thinking about when do they apply, how to get together, you know, all the materials to do that, and what if there is a lapse? I'm Reina Montoya and I am 35. Jose Patino and I am 37. He's 40, dude. If I make it too far, it's an accomplishment, honestly.

I never thought I'd make it this far. So Reina and Jose both run a non-profit immigrant youth advocacy organization in Arizona called Aliento. And so they are very involved with a lot of particularly state and local-based immigration advocacy. You know, a lot of DACA recipients are called casually the DACA kids, and they're just not kids anymore. The average age of a DACA recipient is 31. more than half of DACA recipients are between 31 and 44. I do think that still people have that conception about dreamers, that we are high school students or college students or those little kids.

But time has passed. It's been close to 15 years since the first time that the DACA program was announced. I mean, that's a lot of years, right? We grew up like any other American. We age, and that's something that is inevitable. We can't stop time. you know, they have grown. They have aged as this program has existed for 14 years.

When DACA was first launched in 2012, you had to be 31 or under and have had entered the United States prior to 2007. So you definitely could have an entire pre-DACA life and then a post-DACA life, which is what we're seeing with a lot of these older DACA recipients is they had often graduated high school, sometimes they were already trying to figure out college. Sometimes they had already graduated college. Like, they could legally drink, but they could not legally be in the United States. And so, like, they remember that very clearly. So when DACA was announced, it was a month after I graduated college. I got the DACA approval in my birthday in 2013. So I was 24.

My DACA expires in January of 2027. Yeah, mine expires in February. of 2027. So definitely I've been monitoring the calendar, getting a little bit more concerned as I'm hearing of folks that lapse. Similarly, I am concerned. One of the things typically, I'm like, I kind of wait until like there's like four months, but this time I'm like, no, it's six months. Just to make sure that I read through it and my power and then it's not up to me afterwards. They are now already thinking about when do they apply how to get together, you know, all the materials to do that, and what if there is a lapse.

Wow. They have jobs. They have kids, like growing kids, like teenagers of their own. They have aging parents that they're taking care of. They have gotten their degrees because DACA has allowed them to do that or they're still working on getting their degrees. All the regular sort of like early middle-aged stuff? Yes, they bought houses. They have cars.

They have mortgages. And so going from having legal ability to do all those things to an immediate next day, no legal ability at all is very sudden. Now we're seeing that some individuals are getting detained, arrest, and deported, which is something that I think even, we told a lot of folks pre-Trump being president, they wouldn't believe that that would be the case. We hear more and more stories of people if they're driving down to Yuma and getting us at the checkpoint and people still pretending that DACA is not longer a thing.

So we're seeing this culture of officials that work within immigration being more emboldened. So definitely I feel the fear is more palpable. It's just the danger is more real than ever before. And it's not guaranteed. even if you do everything, what they ask you to do, that you're actually going to be able to get a renewal. Now, both Reina and Jose have been involved in immigration advocacy for a very long time. And they have always been, you know, participating in different events

and with different organizations. And I think also just Arizona as a state has a very long history of immigration advocacy. Like, we were fully undocumented. I remember doing campaigns, making, calls. I had graduated from Arizona State University on May 2012. And I remember feeling so discouraged, like not knowing if I was going to be able to put my degrees at years, not knowing what was going to happen. At that time, we had come up from like a failure of the DREAMAC in 2010. But we kept pushing. So we were doing a lot of like advocacy and pushing President Obama at that time

to do something about it. This morning, Secretary Napolitano announced new action, my administration will take to mend our nation's immigration policy, to make it more fair, more efficient, and more just, specifically for certain young people, sometimes called dreamers. And so when former president Barack Obama went to go make that famous announcement in the Rose Garden, they actually were amongst the people in the country that knew something was coming before Obama spoke those words. Wow. We didn't know it was going to be called DACA,

but I remember getting a call at 5 a.m. in the morning before the announcement from a D.C. number, and they said, can you get a bunch of dreamers in a room and do a press conference? Because big news are going to happen, and a lot of rumors might benefit from it. And I remember hearing on June 15 of 2012,

President Obama in the Rose Garden, making the announcement. Effective immediately. The Department of Homeland Security is taking steps to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people. Over the next few months, eligible individuals who do not present a risk to national security

or public safety will be able to request temporary relief from deportation proceedings and apply for work authorization. I was so nervous. I remember trying to understand what that meant. I think that I migrated with a tourist visa. we overstayed. I didn't know all of those terms back then. And it was many years later that I learned that the reason why we migrated was because my dad was kidnapped by Mexican police. So we were fleeing violence. So for me, a lot of my dreams were about safety. But I just remember trying to figure it out, one, like, who was going to be able to qualify if there were like so many questions. But it was just this sense of hope. that despite of who qualified or not, like, they were going to be some people that would have

some peace. And my brother is seven years younger than me. So I just remember that I was, like, secretly praying. It's like, even if I don't qualify, I just hope that my little brother is able to, like, be okay. Jose was 21 at the time that DACA was announced. He'd been advocating for a program like it for years. But when the DACA policy was actually put into place, you know, it was a little bit bittersweet because it did have limitations. A lot of people simply wouldn't qualify, and that included people that he worked with at a restaurant. And there were adults who were working at, like, the restaurant, and they were like, we're not going to, they're not going to qualify for it. And then I thought about my family because I'm the youngest of four or four of us would probably qualify to my siblings and a lot of cousins.

So I was happy. I thought of my parents and I was sad. I thought of those workers, and they were not going to qualify. And they were like, don't worry about us. Like, we're just happy that you can have this. That somebody can have this. And they're like, just don't forget about us. It really did change the way people could live.

It did change their lives. Like it did for hundreds of thousands of people. I was pretty lucky. It was one of the first ones here in Arizona that was able to benefit from it. I just remember that it came right after elections. So I felt like it was my election person. But yeah, I mean, even when Obama made this announcement, he makes it clear. Let's be clear.

This is not amnesty. This is not amnesty. This is not immunity. This is not a path to citizenship. It's not a permanent fix. This is a temporary stopgap measure. It is a temporary stopgap that is supposed to give Congress more time to find a permanent solution. But as we all know, that permanent solution has never come.

However. However, there are many ways, again, through policy, that things can change in order to make being on DACA undesirable. So the Biden administration, for example, expanded health care access. so that in order to be on the marketplace, DACA counted as legal status. Even though DACA is not legal status, the Biden administration expanded that definition to include DACA. The Trump administration took that back. So now if you're on DACA, you don't have access to the health care marketplace. Last year, there were a few investigations launched into colleges and universities that provide financial aid to DACA recipients.

There was a big public messaging campaign from the Department of Homeland Security to not only emphasize that DACA is not legal status, but those without legal status have to self-deport. So you are telling DACA recipients you should leave. And that then escalated from, you know, access issues and messaging issues to the increasing number of DACA recipients who have been caught up in immigration enforcement, meaning that they have been arrested, they have been detained, and they have been deported. Wow. And in some cases, federal district judges have ordered that those people need to be returned. And in some cases, the government has returned people that it deported.

And it's interesting to see that now as a 37-year-old when I was once 18 years So like, oh, I was so hopeful. We do a lot of presentations, especially in education. So a lot of the council and teachers think of like high school students or middle school students and university students. And they get shocked when we're like there's no DACA recipient in high school. The program is basically close for them. Many probably under like the age of 25 don't even know what the DACA program is, general public. Many of the students have no idea.

The DACA program exists, what it was, who's eligible. I'm like, this is the students that we're working with. And it's also like now we're asking them, like, kind of to believe that something, this mythical thing can happen, like that could become a medical program for them.

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Gene, code switch. Well, not just Gene, because Hamaana Bustillo, one of our immigration reporters here at NPR has been telling me about her reporting on how the Trump White House is treating the DACA program and the now mostly middle-aged recipients of that special immigration status. So DACA is almost 14 years old, and it's been contested ever since it was put in a place. After Obama implemented it, Trump tried to get rid of it. The first time, courts struck that down, there was public backlash. And now in this administration, they have not taken steps, like you said, to.

get rid of DACA, but they have made it harder to access, they've stripped the program. What is that experience like for Jose and for Raina? As they go through the process of trying to re-up again, this thing that they've done every two years for most of their adult lives. You know, they acknowledge that it is unstable. We're talking now about a half a million people on DACA. Some have found ways to adjust their status. They've married U.S. citizens. They've been able to get legal status through different ways.

Some have left the country. And so things move and they evolve, but the policy is the same. And I think that it is important to acknowledge that the implications of the same policy are going to be different because the population that we're talking about is now different. And I mean, like, for me, that's a main factor about why I don't want to have kids because I know what it's like to. live with the uncertainty of growing up with undocumented parents. I lead a nonprofit, so it's not just about me. Like, I think about my employees.

Like, they're counting my ability to run a successful organization for them to bring foot to their table and to feed their families. So definitely it's like this level of extra pressure, not only for yourself, but for your family, but also for the commitment of your work, right? And if I were to be lapsed within my DACA, I wouldn't be able to do that job and get compensated, right? So I think that there's all these different layers that that were navigating at this age that is very different when you're in your early 20s. At this point in time, I don't think I want to be a 40-year-old undocumented person who has a master's degree and all these things.

on my resume, and I'm like, maybe it's enough that this country doesn't want you. And they said it multiple times. And I think that probably hurts the most, the fact that Trump was elected twice. And the last time with the popular vote and significant Latino support, significant people that I'm within my family, uncles and cousins that I grew up who are undocumented at some time. And then I just did their status. The fact that I had come chish with them, and they decided, like, we're going to still bopher this person. I'm like, this is what could happen to not only me, but your brother.

your sister, people that you care about. So that's the thing that was the most painful and still painful within me. And that's something that to me is like, at some point in time, a country can tell you so many different ways that they don't want you here. And on one hand, they stay because this is their country. They love it. They believe in it. But, you know, at this point, they have seen so many ups and downs of DACA.

that they kind of know they can't really trust it. So I feel that like if I were to make the really hard choice of living my country, which I consider the U.S. my home, I'm in that age that I should probably be thinking because another country like Canada or Spain would probably would hire me pretty quickly in other field. So I'm in that age that I'm still competitive age, right? That they desire me to move. But if I am like 55 and I'm in a place like this,

that I'm undocumented. I'm not going to be so desirable to migrate legally to another place. DACA recipients I spoke with have varying minds about this. Some of them, you know, they know what they're in for. And it's kind of like, it's been described to me as like a base level anxiety that they just kind of like always sort of have. But they've always had it. So, you know, they have other things. They have jobs.

They have kids. So it's there. But like, they're not awake thinking about it every night. Other people are. Other people are a lot more. panicked about that instability. And I think that just awareness of that instability has gotten a little bit worse this year as we are seeing these lapses and not just O'Daka's being challenged in court again.

We're seeing that this administration is utilizing every tool at their disposal from delays to detentions, to arrest, to ensure that this program becomes weaker and weaker. So it's like this new like agency side impact on being able to just have DACA is I think what takes it to the next level for a lot of people. We were made a promise by the U.S. government that if we come in good faith, tell them all our documents that we've been here that they were not going to utilize that data against us and we're seeing with this administration that they're not respecting that promise. That problem was made by the Obama administration, not Trump. It's a different world, right? Steal the U.S. government. I think clearly enough that Trump has said that this, whatever was promised before him, it no longer matters.

And I think we should behave that way. I think that it will get worse before, I guess, better. I think we could hazard some guesses if we wanted. But, like, what has the Trump administration said about why? How does it explain its motivations for trying to keep people from staying in the country? Yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways, the answer is the same. They go back to it's a national security risk. And they say that the vetting that had been done under prior administrations, including its own, was not enough.

And so processing at USCIS has gotten a lot slower. And they say it's because they need to take more time to review every application and do more vetting. And we see this as the rationale with DACA. We see this as the rationale with the pause on 39 countries that have the travel ban with people who are already here. You know, that is essentially the bottom line across the board. Hmm. But of course, the Trump administration has also been playing footsie with the idea that this country should be a country for white people and has taken a very hardline anti-immigrant stance.

those things seem pretty related. Yeah, I mean, like even just looking at the mission statement change of USCIS, there is a focus on protecting American workers. They had taken out even during the first Trump administration, the phrase nation of immigrants from the mission statement. America is not a nation of immigrants. It is a nation of citizens. And, you know, kind of like what that means, who it's allowing in, who it's not. Again, with USCIS kind of across the board taking this stance, we're seeing this also this month with how it's handling the refugee system. Now, refugees are also under the State Department and there are many other agencies that deal with refugees. But they did just increase the cap from about 7,000. 500 to 17,500. So adding about 10,000 refugees. But then they said all those slots are going to be filled with white South Africans known as the Afrikaners. And so far this fiscal year, there have only been three refugees to be admitted into the United States that were not white Afrikaners. So, you know, they are leaning into that idea of who is in, who is in, who is.

is out, who do we want to make it more difficult for to follow those existing pathways for either a legal status or alternatively, what is a protection that has been granted before, and how do we limit that? Jose and Raina have been DACA recipients for, again, like most of the adult laws, almost 15 years now. How are they feeling about their prospects with this administration being the people handling this that is. Yeah. You know, I think when I asked him about kind of the future here, they are both kind of of slightly different two minds about it. For me, this is, this is home. It goes back to a very simple thing that my dad taught me is when you don't like something,

when something is broken, you don't complain about it, you do something about it. And I think for me, that's where I hold on to. That's what gives me irrational sense of hope and optimism. I try to be reminded that we're not hopeless, that we do have power, even though that we're fighting really hard institutions and a really hard administration that is really against us. I do believe that I do believe on what I was thought when I came to the United States. I drank the Kool-Aid. I drank the American Dream Kool-Aid. And I do believe that we are a country that needs to be living up to our valiance.

So all men are created equal. I'm going to continue to fight until the last day that they have me here. I'll fight for not only myself, but for our country that has given an opportunity to DACA recipients. And we have seen the success of that. And even though there's actors that are trying to take that away from us, it is up to us, whether we let that happen or not. You know, Jose is definitely not stepping away from that fight, but at the same time, he acknowledges,

and Reina does too, to be clear, but he acknowledged a lot more of the eroded trust within the community. The DACA Perman was the hope, not only for DACA recipients who were eligible, but also for younger generations and older generations that this country, that things could be different. And to many extent, the erosion of the DACA program

and that protections has eroded a lot of that hopeless within the community because they're like, if those kids who, I think that's a, those kids, now we're middle-aged, if those individuals that were the most protected or had the most compelling story or like the best things and did everything right, if they're vulnerable, then what about us?

So DACA used to represent hope, what does it represent now? I think it still represents hope. So a lot of people talk about dreamers. Not every dreamer is a doctor recipient. A dreamer is just someone who was brought here when they were young. And in the vein of advocating for this very young population, they were labeled as dreamers. Like someone that had a dream of growing up someday and becoming an astronaut or a teacher or a scientist. And the goal was advocating for that future. And I asked a lot of folks, including Raina and Jose, if the dream had been achieved. You know, did you dream? Did it become real? Did it become real? And I think for a lot of people

that I spoke with, the answer is yes, but the dream. But the dream. doesn't stop. So, you know, you, there's still a dream of falling in love with someone and getting married. There's still the dream of finishing your PhD. There's still the dream of that next stage in life and or maintaining the thing you were able to achieve, like just sustaining that happiness of you have your own apartment in downtown and it's really adorably decorated and you have it to yourself and you get to live on your own. Like just achieving that and maintaining that is happiness. And so I think for people who are on DACA, right now DACA is the key to maintaining that or achieving that next thing. But then at the same time, a lot of people

I want to say almost regretted it. Like almost said, like, yes, I've achieved all these things, but now I could be taken away from me at any moment. Now I'm overly dependent on the government. Now, at any point, like, it could have been all for nothing. And would I have just been better off living in the shadows? Like, you fall harder. And it was really interesting hearing people describe it as. this thing that has provided them so much opportunity and so much freedom and then describing it as an anchor.

And like a thing that also brings them down. And, you know, it provides. And when it provides, it's great. But when that gets taken out, it's like the fall is really hard. And that is a reality that I think is a lot sharper in the last year, six months. than before with a lot of the other fights that we have seen the last few years with DACA. Amanda Bustillo is a correspondent for NPR who covers politics and policy in Washington, specifically as it relates to the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration. Thank you, Amanda.

Thanks, Jane. And that's our show. But just a reminder that our next episode will be coming to your feet on Friday. You'll be finding us every week going forward on Tuesdays and Fridays. Thank you for listening, as always, rocking with us. This episode you're listening to was produced by Christina Kala. It was edited by Courtney Stein and Anna Yucaninoff, and our engineer was Robert Rodriguez. And we would be

remiss if we did not shout out the rest of the Code Switch Massive. That's Xavier Lopez, Jess Kung, Leah Donnella, Thalia Mortata, B. A. Parker, Barton Gerdwood and Yelanda Sanguini. As for me, I'm Gene Demby. And I'm Hima Bustillo. Be easy, y'all. Bye.

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