Brittany Aguilera, a DACA recipient who came to the U.S. from Trinidad when she was just three years old, has steadily renewed her DACA since 2012. When Donald Trump announced the end of the program, she rushed to submit her final renewal application, assuming she was in the clear because she mailed it weeks before the arbitrary Oct. 5 deadline. But a clerical error—a missing signature—resulted in her application being returned. Unable to get it reconsidered because the administration is no longer accepting DACA applications or renewals, her DACA is now expired, leaving her job and future up in the air:
I alerted my bosses right away. It put all of this into motion. They’re trying to figure out a way to keep me. My last day is tomorrow. My bosses have said that they could hold my job until January, to see if anything changes.
The situation, when you deal with it for so long, it turns you into a person who doesn’t have the ability to stress the way a normal person stresses; you don’t have the ability to show the regular emotions a normal person would show. All you know is how you feel in the moment. All I can do is exhaust all possible options. I’m focussed on taking the next step, to survive past Thursday. My practical move is taking a breather. According to what everyone tells me, there’s still discussions on this topic going on—anything can happen.
I don’t want to become a different person because of this situation. I don’t just want to be another ‘Dreamer’ who Trump screwed over, or who a clerical error screwed over. I have a nephew. I need to be able to smile back at him when he smiles at me.
“I never really worried. I’m in good standing. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to do,” Brittany said about initially applying for DACA. “When Trump won, I thought, DACA’s going to be gone. There was a sense of exhaustion, of being permanently tired. More than really stressed, more than really worried; it was more of a tired feeling, like a heavy blanket.” Research has shown that DACA not only benefitted young immigrants economically by allowing them to work legally and support their families and communities, it also benefitted them emotionally:
A recent study from Harvard Medical School used national survey data to demonstrate that rates of psychological distress fell 40% amongst those eligible for DACA after it’s passage compared to those ineligible for DACA. What’s more, this effect appears to impact subsequent generations. Another study showed that amongst children of DACA eligible mothers, rates of anxiety and adjustment disorder fell by nearly half after its passage. While programs like DACA and the DREAM Act are not explicitly meant to be public health programs, their impact on mental health are on par with our best available population health interventions.
But in the past few months, more than 11,000 DACA recipients have lost their protections and work permits, meaning they not only stand to lose their incomes, but stand to return to the same sort of stress they lived in before DACA’s implementation. Every day Republican leaders don’t act, another 122 DACA recipients lose their status. In Brittany’s case, she may lose her livelihood because of a simple clerical error. This is no way to live. The choice is crystal clear: Congress must act to protect young immigrants like Brittany, and they must act now.