Editor’s note: The following essay was written by a City College DACA student in her English composition class. In the piece below, she explains the betrayal she felt when she learned at 17 that she was undocumented, and then a decade later, that her Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status was at risk under the present administration. The student’s name has been withheld to protect her and her family.
The sound of glass shatters. A crescendo of screaming and anger. All of my dreams, all of my hopes, all of my plans of escape have quickly faded with the settling of this news. Why? Why? Why me? There’s something that can be done, right? How? No! No! I won’t accept this! I’m not even sure what this means for someone like me.
So many questions gather and shove each other in my head. The screaming and questions in my mind overpower the low, indistinguishable mumbles that match the movements of my school counselor’s red lips. I watch how the hope that was once reflected in her eyes fades into the abyss of my future. This is the moment I am deemed different, branded with a mark that reads, “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT.”
This wasn’t the way the story was supposed to go, and this wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Growing up, I was familiar with injustice, fear, and what it meant to struggle. But I had done everything right to prepare for that moment, the moment when I was going to be able to graduate, flee my home and achieve my dreams. In school, I had always tried my best and took every advanced course I could. Extracurricular activities and college prep courses filled my schedule every year to distract me from my home life. Counselors encouraged and cheered me on as someone with a bright future who was determined to achieve the “American Dream” in the land of opportunity. I was going be the first in my family to go to college, and not just any college, but a four year university, far away from home. Up to that moment with my counselor I had never thought of myself as different. In my mind I was like any other American teenager who sang along with radio hits, watched action movies, and had woken up one day to see one plane after the other shatter and shake America to its core. Along with my classmates, I had studied the history of this great nation and read about the struggles that different groups had faced. Hand over my heart, I pledged allegiance to the flag at every football game my friends and I attended. I was no different. This was my home, the only home I had forever known.
I was sixteen years old when my counselor broke the news to me. I was aware that I had been born in a different country, Mexico, but hadn’t grasped the idea of what this would mean. I would not be able to continue on to college; I would not be able to work because I was undocumented.
I wanted answers and I wanted them now! Upon arriving home, I interrogated my mother for hours, and once I knew the truth, I bargained with her as if this could change the past or the answers to my questions. It didn’t make any sense to me, I felt robbed and cheated. “You brought me here as a baby, I mean, how could I not have papers?” I desperately pleaded.
My mom replied, “When I brought you here, I thought things would be different for you and things would change. I believed that we would be legal by the time you were in high school; I thought we would be able to fix our status and it wouldn’t really affect you.” Her beliefs would never come true for me, nor for thousands of others in similar situations.
It had all been in vain, all of it. All the effort I had put towards school was now meaningless, simple as that. Graduating high school was going to be a different experience for me than it would be for my peers. They could achieve it, that moment when you alone possessed the keys to your future, that moment where the world was yours and anything was possible. I remember dreading my graduation, loathing the fact that soon I would be turning eighteen. At eighteen, I would be stripped of my goals and any part of “the American dream.” I was no longer equal; I was beneath, and my life choices were no longer going to be mine to make. I was a criminal now, and I would be punished for growing up in a country I called home for my entire conscious life.
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The consolation I received from my friends or people who knew of my situation was “Well, I mean, I don’t get it; you don’t look like an immigrant or sound like one.” As if to say you are above “those people”; you are of higher quality, but still you are different. As if to say, “Your crime is not as offensive as the others, those who fled poverty and death. Those immigrants should get none of the American Dream or any of the freedoms.” According to some, I deserved only a taste of freedom, just enough, to let me work and go to school. I wasn’t permitted any stability or certainty because that would be asking too much.
I am only what you call a cheap “knock off,” an imitation American who still looks like the real deal but is worthless. I am the American who is not as valuable but who still talks and looks like everyone else. I am seen as a threat.
What an idiot I have been! What a joke! I thought I was going to be able to fly. I had dreamed of being equal, but branded criminals like me don’t get that luxury. We don’t get the right to steer our own lives no matter how much we assimilate or reflect American culture, no matter how much we have erased any trace of a Mexican accent. We are different just because a piece of paper proclaims it so. We are foreigners in both countries and don’t belong anywhere. We have been stripped of our Mexican culture to pursue the “American dream,” a dream of acceptance, peace, and prosperity, a promise that falls short just because of a piece of paper. Others debate our future while we can only sit on the sidelines dreaming of all the possibilities. We hear political discussions and questions with no answers. Why do people view us as criminals? What have we done that is so bad? Pursue a better life for our families? Hope for a better life? Is that the harm we have caused? Forgive us for ever believing in this illusion.
The last couple of years everything had finally started to come together. In the year 2015 I had finally received DACA, a permit that would grant me the opportunity to work legally in the U.S and to further my education. Finally I had reached stability, putting behind me so much wasted time, energy, and strength; I had just become an equal and functioning member of society. I was getting set to transfer to a four year university and this would be the year everything was supposed to go right. And yet, here I am once more, almost a decade later on the brink of having everything torn away from me. Again, I hear the sound of shattering glass, only this time I don’t have a school counselor to offer support or concern. I must deal with this sabotage all on my own.
Now I get the privilege of watching it all crumble before my eyes. Once more, I’m going to have to hold that vast emptiness within me. I am preparing myself to hear the inevitable: “You are now ineligible for DACA.” No longer will I be equal; my fate will have been decided for me, and it will be time to hide and live in fear.
What a moron my mother must have been fleeing the corruption, danger, violence, and her inevitable death in Mexico, cradling an infant in her arms.