DACA & Dreamers

By the numbers and their individual stories, the DACA program has given people just starting their adult lives a lifeline.

Update as of 6.18.20: Following the recent Supreme Court decision on DACA, we are currently still awaiting new guidance from USCIS on how they intend to comply with the Court’s ruling...

On June 18, 2020 the U.S. Supreme Court sided with DACA recipients ruling that the way in which the Trump administration rescinded the DACA program in 2017 was unlawful. The decision is a huge victory for immigrant communities and their allies who mobilized to protect the DACA program.

"Over two million of the nation's eleven million undocumented immigrants have lived in the United States since childhood. Due to a broken immigration system, they grow up to uncertain futures. In Lives in Limbo, Roberto G. Gonzales introduces us to two groups: the college-goers, like Ricardo, whose good grades and strong network of community support propelled him into higher education, only to land in a factory job a few years after graduation, and the early-exiters, like Gabriel, who failed to make meaningful connections in high school and started navigating dead-end jobs, immigration checkpoints, and a world narrowly circumscribed by legal limitations. This ethnography asks why highly educated undocumented youth ultimately share similar work and life outcomes with their less-educated peers, even as higher education is touted as the path to integration and success in America. Gonzales bookends his study with discussions of how the prospect of immigration reform, especially the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, could impact the lives of these young Americans"--Provided by publisher

Some 16.6 million people nationwide live in mixed-status families, containing a combination of U.S. citizens, residents, and undocumented immigrants. U.S. immigration governance has become an almost daily news headline. Yet even in the absence of federal immigration reform over the last twenty years, existing policies and practices have already been profoundly impacting these family units. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in San Diego over more than a decade, Border Brokers documents the continuing deleterious effects of U.S. immigration policies and enforcement practices on a group of now young adults and their families. In the first book-length longitudinal study of mixed-status families, Christina M. Getrich provides an on-the-ground portrayal of these young adults' lives from their own perspectives and in their own words. More importantly, Getrich identifies how these individuals have developed resiliency and agency beginning in their teens to improve circumstances for immigrant communities. Despite the significant constraints their families face, these children have emerged into adulthood as grounded and skilled brokers who effectively use their local knowledge bases, life skills honed in their families, and transborder competencies. Refuting the notion of their failure to assimilate, she highlights the mature, engaged citizenship they model as they transition to adulthood to be perhaps their most enduring contribution to creating a better U.S. society. An accessible ethnography rooted in the everyday, this book portrays the complexity of life in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. It offers important insights for anthropologists, educators, policy-makers, and activists working on immigration and social justice issues.

Up-to-date information & resources for undocumented students

The fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has ping ponged between all three branches of government. But with the Supreme Court poised to decide DACA's future in spring 2020, Congress may finally be forced to act to resolve the status of DREAMers after nearly two decades of considering various DREAM Act bills. Could this break the long stalemate Congress has had on passing substantive immigration legislation, and pave the way for other actions?

WASHINGTON – After the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump Administration acted illegally in its attempt to eliminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program which protects approximately 10,000 Dreamers in the Central Valley, Representative Josh Harder (CA-10) asked United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to clarify its plans for the future of the program and abandon efforts to sidestep the Supreme Court Ruling.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to end legal protections for 650,000 young immigrants, a stunning rebuke to the president in the midst of his reelection campaign.The outcome seems certain to elevate the issue in Trump's campaign, given the anti-immigrant rhetoric of his first presidential run in 2016 and immigration restrictions his administration has imposed since then.

Big win today for unauthorized immigration advocates. Big loss for the White House.

Bloomberg Law, Case and Controversies podcast interviewed Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration’s Director of Policy and Communications, Jose Magaña- Salgado about the forthcoming SCOTUS hearing on DACA and the Alliance’s higher ed. amicus brief. Listen to the episode here.  TweetShareSharePin0 Shares

The decision is a dramatic victory for immigration advocates and gives a new lease on life for the so-called DREAMers, immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Arizona joined 12 other states this week that asked the Supreme Court to roll back the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which they say has caused "irreparable harm" to their states.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to end legal protections for 650,000 young immigrants, the second stunning election-season rebuke from the court in a week after its ruling that it's a href="https://apnews...

The Supreme Court’s DACA decision is seen as a huge political loss for President Trump. It is anything but.

The fate of Dreamers, those brought to the United States as children, is on uncertain ground as the U.S. Supreme Court reviews the Trump administration’s decision to rescind DACA. However, the momentum of the youth-led immigrant rights movement gives hope that the law will follow.

The Supreme Court must reverse the judgments of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the District Court for the District of Columbia, and the orders of the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, preventing the Department of Homeland Security from winding down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.

Finalist, 2020 C. Wright Mills Award, given by the Society for the Study of Social Problems Honorable Mention, 2021 Asian America Section Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association An inspiring look inside immigrant youth's political activism in perilous times Undocumented immigrants in the United States who engage in social activism do so at great risk: the threat of deportation. In Organizing While Undocumented, Kevin Escudero shows why and how--despite this risk--many of them bravely continue to fight on the front lines for their rights. Drawing on more than five years of research, including interviews with undocumented youth organizers, Escudero focuses on the movement's epicenters--San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City--to explain the impressive political success of the undocumented immigrant community. He shows how their identities as undocumented immigrants, but also as queer individuals, people of color, and women, connect their efforts to broader social justice struggles today. A timely, worthwhile read, Organizing While Undocumented gives us a look at inspiring triumphs, as well as the inevitable perils, of political activism in precarious times.

Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics