PHOENIX — Reyna Montoya was ten when she and her family fled violence in Tijuana and immigrated illegally to the US. Growing up in Arizona, she feared that even a minor traffic violation could lead to her deportation.
It wasn’t until 11 years later, in 2012, that she felt relief, when she received a letter confirming she had been accepted into a new program for immigrants who came to the country illegally as children.
“Suddenly all these possibilities opened up,” Montoya said, fighting back tears. The Obama era Deferred action for child arrivals program granted her and hundreds of thousands of others two-year, renewable permits to live and work legally in the US.
But as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House after… failed bid to end DACA in his first term, the approximately 535,000 current recipients are once again preparing for a whirlwind of uncertainty. Meanwhile, a years-long challenge to DACA could ultimately make it illegal, leaving people like Montoya without protection from deportation.
“I have to take his (Trump’s) words very seriously that when they say ‘mass deportation,’ that includes people like me,” said Montoya, who heads Aliento, an Arizona-based immigrant rights advocacy group.
Uncertainty is nothing new for DACA recipients. As many have grown up school age to adulthoodthey have witnessed a barrage of legal threats against the program.
DACA has not accepted new applicants since 2021, when a federal judge deemed it illegal and ordered that new applications would not be processed, although current recipients could still renew their permits. The Biden administration has appealed the ruling and the case is currently pending.
For those who have obtained and renewed DACA permits, the benefits have been life-changing. With DACA, Montoya was able to work legally for the first time, receive health and dental care, and obtain a driver’s license.
Many recipients had hoped that Vice President Kamala Harris would win the presidency and continue to fight for them. But the re-election of Trump, who has repeatedly accused immigrants of fueling violent crime and “poisoning the blood” of the United States, has increased their fears that DACA could end and they could be deported.
Out of an abundance of caution, some are rushing to renew their residency permits, according to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which is offering free legal representation to help them through the lengthy process.
Others are preparing for possible family separations. Pedro Gonzalez-Aboyte, a Phoenix native and DACA recipient, said he and his immigrant parents, along with his two U.S.-born brothers, recently discussed the possibility of a divorce.
Gonzalez-Aboyte remembered his parents, who emigrated from Mexico, and said that even if they couldn’t stay in the country, “as long as the three of you are here and everything is okay, that’s what we want.”
“That was a very real conversation we had,” Gonzalez-Aboyte said.
Trump transition team officials did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
While it’s unclear how Trump might impact DACA this time, he has suggested scaling back other programs that offer it temporary protection for immigrants and staffs his new government with immigration hardliners, among others Stephen Miller and Thomas Homan.
During his first term, Trump attempted to repeal DACA. But inside 2020the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that his administration improperly ended the program, although it did not rule on the program’s legality.
But the fate of DACA will not be left to Trump immediately, if at all.
A three-judge panel on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – considered the nation’s most conservative appeals court — arguments heard in October on the legality of DACA. The case, initially filed in 2018 by Texas and other Republican-led states, now focuses on a Biden administration rule intended to preserve and strengthen DACA.
Lawyers for DACA opponents argued that immigrants in the country illegally pose a financial burden on states. Meanwhile, the Biden administration, along with intervenors, claims that Texas has not demonstrated that the costs it cites are attributable to the policy and therefore have no basis.
The panel has no deadline to make a ruling. Either way, the ruling will likely be appealed, potentially taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell University, said the most likely scenario is that the panel confirms that DACA is illegal and the case goes to the Supreme Court. He doesn’t expect Trump to immediately try to end DACA, but doesn’t rule out the possibility.
“I don’t know if they can actually end the program any faster than the current tie-down,” he said. “They could still do it, but they have an awful lot of immigration policy stuff on their plate.”
Yale-Loehr said the Biden administration is limited at this stage in how it could help DACA recipients, but it could allow recipients to renew their permits early and process them as quickly as possible.
Greisa Martinez Rosas is a DACA recipient and executive director of United We Dream, a youth-led immigrant advocacy network with more than one million members nationwide. She said the immigrant rights movement has grown tremendously since Trump’s first term, and that she has been preparing for this moment for years, “building an agile and responsive infrastructure so we can make shifts as threats emerge.”
She said they are calling on Americans to provide sanctuary for immigrants, preparing to guarantee people’s physical and psychological safety in the event of mass deportations, planning demonstrations and asking for help from the current administration.
“We still have a few months before the Biden administration has every tool at its disposal to protect and defend as many people as possible,” Martinez Rosas said at a recent press conference. “We expect them to do that now more than ever.”
___
Gabriel Sandoval is a staff member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.