As part of its "first-of-its-kind" legal brief filed at the Supreme Court in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, United We Dream has released a series of videos profiling some of the young immigrants who will be directly impacted should the justices side with the Trump administration’s unlawful termination of the popular and successful program.
“As part of the Home is Here campaign,” the immigrant youth-led organization said in a statement, “the series captures the journeys, struggles, and successes of United We Dream members from India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and elsewhere who now live in Florida, Oregon, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Illinois, Maryland, California, and across the nation.”
Among the DACA recipients profiled is Manny, who came to the U.S. from Nigeria when he was just eight. Today he’s a musician with a promising career, recently winning a Grammy as part the American Dreamers: Voices of Hope, Music of Freedom collaborative album. But even with all his success, Manny says that “being undocumented affects everything. Things like health insurance. If you’re a student, things like financial aid. You can’t start a business. You can’t work. You feel like you’re a prisoner.”
Numerous surveys over the years have shown that DACA has had life-changing effects on young immigrants, from better employment opportunities, to better accessibility to higher education, to becoming homeowners, to making recipients feel like they finally “belong in the U.S.” But unable to end the program on its own, the administration is now hoping the Supreme Court will do its dirty work for it and shatter the dreams of hundreds of thousands of young people.
United We Dream’s brief is among the recent, numerous pro-DACA filings from hundreds of businesses and business associations, colleges and universities, elected congressional leaders, and law enforcement leaders ahead of the Supreme Court’s November 12 hearing—a date that has also left young immigrants and their families with increased anxiety, a recent survey said.
“Fear of family separation is particularly strong among DACA recipients who are parents,” the finding said. “Among those with children, 75 percent reported that they think about ‘being separated from [their] children because of deportation’ at least once a day, while 72 percent reported thinking about ‘not being able to see [their] children grow up because of deportation’ at least once a day.” For Manny, family separation has already been a reality.
Following his dad’s deportation, he was forced to quickly grow up and essentially become a second parent to his younger siblings. “It’s either you work or figure it out, or you lose this fight in life,” he says. He’s now fighting to keep the protections that have helped him and his family thrive. “I was with my mom and my sister,” he said he remembers about when DACA was announced. “We were just like, praising God. She was just really really happy.”
Others profiled in the “Home Is Here” series are Maricruz, a third grade teacher; Tasneem, an aspiring constitutional attorney; and Sana, a tech innovation designer. All very different people, but all deserving of dignity. “At the end of the day, before being a judge, before being a pastor, a preacher, a soccer player, any title, basketball player, you’re a human being,” Manny says. “Before being an immigrant in any country, you’re a human being. You’re human first.”