The Forgotten Status in the Immigration Narrative

Reflections from a 13-year DACA recipient

If you’re a young adult in America asking yourself what am I doing with my life?, you are not alone. Anxiety about making the right move, career choice, or dating the right person can be overwhelming for anyone. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients experience all of life’s uncertainties, but with a catch: our choices are limited by an increasingly hostile political climate. Our choices are temporary. Our choices are dangerous.

At seven years old, my family immigrated to the United States from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In 2012, I applied to the DACA program. By the time I was a sophomore in high school I was able to join my fellow classmates in the coming-of-age events of getting a driver’s license, starting my first part-time job at the mall, and applying to colleges.

However, going to college was a cruel reality check. I was denied any financial assistance due to my status. I had to balance a full-time job, my coursework, and the labor-intensive immigration process. I joined the immigrant rights youth movement, advocating for in-state tuition (not afforded to DACA) and a clean DREAM Act in Congress and pushing for more resources for undocumented students at university systems in the South. During one particularly heavy semester I developed an eye twitch and stress hives. A well-meaning doctor suggested I cut down on my stress factors; I shot back that needing to work and study full-time while worrying about my immigration status wasn’t exactly a spa day. In 2020, I graduated with a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree having paid a steep price: my family’s financial sacrifice and my own mental and physical burnout.

The heartbreaks used to come in small pieces. I turned down international opportunities for study abroad and conferences because I was terrified to travel with Advance Parole, a legitimate travel program, during the first Trump administration and risk an arbitrary denial if I tried to re-enter. The risk of being denied re-entry was too great. Now, under Trump 2.0, it is also too costly. On October 16th, 2025, U.S. Customs and Immigration Services slapped a $1000 immigration parole fee for re-entry into the country. Not only does this limit my opportunities, but it keeps me separated from my family in Mexico.

Being a DACA recipient is the worst it’s ever been. The uncertainty of the program has left many of us creating back-up plans if we are detained or deported. It is a perpetual nightmare to plan for your future as a professional in bracketed, borrowed pieces of time. Now, in 2025, DACA recipients are no longer allowed to apply for FHA loans or work in the state of Texas. The Texas ruling impacts at least 90,000 DACA recipients, including myself, and paints us as an “injury” to the state. So now, as a Texas resident, I must move across the border to New Mexico simply to maintain employment. Ironically, I work with American companies to bring non-immigrant workers on temporary legal work visas.

Pursuing the American dream fed to me growing up, I launched my own small business right before the Texas ruling came out. Now, I am at a crossroads, challenged with deciding where to go, live, and work as the Texas ruling prohibits our ability to do so. But this isn’t just my story. It is the story of thousands of DACA recipients who have businesses, houses, families, and loved ones in Texas, forced to choose between leaving the state or accruing unlawful status. The latter means risking detention, deportation, and forfeiting the already fragile protections of DACA. As we have seen in recent ICE raids, those risks include violence. To compound the threat, ICE does not seem to care about our legal status. There are numerous reports of ICE detaining DACA recipients. Xochitl Santiago was detained while traveling for work at the El Paso International Airport and had to fight to be released from ICE detention even after the judge ruled on her behalf. Cases like these are acts of mental warfare, meant to break our spirit, resolve, and hope in the deeply broken immigration system.

Some (uninformed) Americans ask why we don’t “just become residents.” Well, it’s not allowed at the time of writing this. Additionally, staying in the country costs thousands of dollars (each fee is $555 every two years plus legal fees) and requires an impeccable criminal record.

For those of us that arrived before 2012, we are not DREAMER children anymore. It is infantilizing, demoralizing and politically cruel to describe us as chess pieces in a game we have been forced to play for over 13 years. Our resolve may keep us going, but it must be met with real, meaningful action and legislation to codify our protections in law and provide a pathway for us to permanently adjust our status and obtain citizenship, and be allowed to exist without fear outside of the periphery of the American immigration system.

As the years have passed, I have come to a realization that many of us have only dared to whisper in the privacy of closed doors and safe spaces: DACA is not enough. It was enough for a 16-year-old girl who only cared about getting a driver license with her friends and having a job at the mall. It is not enough for a tax-paying small business owner close to 30. It is not enough for those of us who have spent the majority of our lives here, contributing to the American economy and living under a microscope constantly examining our moral character. It is no longer heartbreak, but soul-crushing danger.

By a DACA recipient who was granted anonymity by The Contrarian for fear of targeting by ICE.

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