This group of young undocumented students gets ready to visit their home country facing the new and tough immigration policies of the Trump era. Upon their return they plan to cross the U.S.-Mexico border by bus accompanied by lawyers and academics.
By: Isaias Alvarado, Univision News ~ May 12, 2017
LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Although the status of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration policy is still in limbo, an academic program organized by the California-Mexico Studies Center (CMSC) has resumed the plan to bring dozens of Dreamers to Mexico to different states of the country.
To date, 34 DACA beneficiaries are on the list of participants of the program. Since 2012, more than 120 dreamers Have been reunited with their roots and relatives on the other side of the border thanks to this program that uses a special permit to travel abroad, known as Advance Parole .
The planning for the Summer 2017 California-Mexico Dreamers Study Abroad Program, the sixth program planned by the CMSC, was on-hold after the election of Donald Trump - whom in his campaign promised to eliminate DACA, but later said that he had changed his opinion. The CMSC later decided to open the application period for the summer 2017 program after considering taking additional safety measures to the return to the United States by bus. The group of Dreamers will cross the U.S.-Mexico border by bus accompanied by lawyers and academics (in the previous routes the students took a flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles).
"We are going to return with a lawyer, academics and even a priest because we want to make sure that not one of the participants is going to be detained upon their return to the U.S.," said Armando Vázquez-Ramos, director of the California-Mexico Studies Center and organizer of the program.
Regarding the risks they may face while abroad during a time of so many changes and hardening of migration policies, organizers say they are prepared to take them on. "If the cancellation of DACA occurs during the trip they are protected by a special permit," said the professor. "There is certainly a risk , but we decided to launch the call because we bet that they will not play the DACA program and because there is a great interest," he added.
Three dreamers who will be part of this tour in their native Mexico, which will be held from August 1 to 21, shared with Univision News the reasons why they decided to take this risk.
Karina: "Fear can not paralyze us"
"What would happen if I have to stay in Mexico?," Karina Ruiz asked herself, an Arizona dreamer who will make the trip this summer with other DACA beneficiaries. "I would have a tremendous problem, I have talked to my husband that if border patrol don't let me back in the U.S., we would have to take our children to Mexico," says Ruiz, who has three children, ages 5, 7 and 15.
"The president has said that he does not want to 'touch' DACA, but there is an uncertainty, although if we do not take risks nobody will do it for us," she says.
"The message is that fear can not paralyze us, we are taking a calculated risk," said this Phoenix resident.
A month after she turned 15, Ruiz illegally crossed the border between Mexico and the United States. Her parents, originally from Oaxaca, brought her to have a better life. Despite the challenges of being undocumented, she graduated from Biochemistry at Arizona State University in May 2015 and is currently working with the Arizona Dream Act Coalition.
"It's been 18 years without seeing my brothers, I do not know my nephews and I was not there when my grandparents died, " shares Ruiz, who believes that reuniting with her relatives is one of the main incentives to return to her country of origin.
Ruiz also learned that going to Mexico would allow him to legally re-enter the U.S. and expedite the process to adjust her immigration status. Although experts consider that it is not a safe route, nor a direct path to legalization, and recommend to analyze each case before traveling abroad using an Advance Parole.
José: "I can get ahead in Mexico too"
José Rivas, a dreamer currently pursuing a Master's degree in mental health at the University of Wyoming, knows that given the current political and immigration uncertainty, it is not the best time to leave the country; However, he believes that it will be worthwhile to be part of the academic journey of the California-Mexico Studies Center to return to his homeland, see his family, and embrace his culture.
"The fear is there because anything can happen, especially with President Trump, who promised to remove DACA," he says.
Rivas, 27, has no definite plan in case he can not return to the U.S., but hopes that Mexico will also give him an opportunity.
"I think if I have to stay there, with the studies that I have (a degree in Criminal Justice), I hope to be able to move ahead in Mexico as well; I just have to adapt," says Rivas who currently lives at the University of Wyoming campus.
He was six years old when he emigrated from the State of Mexico to northern California. His grandmother brought him to the U.S. and three years later came his parents, who currently live in Modesto. He has only been out of the U.S. once since then, when in 2015 he applied for Advance Parole to provide community service in Trinidad and Tobago.
"For me this trip is an opportunity to touch Mexican lands, to connect with our roots and see the families that I have not seen in 21 years," he says.
This young man says that if he had the opportunity to talk to the president he would ask him to allow Dreamers contribute to this country. "We are asking to compete for jobs and scholarships, because we are not all drug dealers or rapists," he says.
Miriam: "I want to know where I am from"
For 17 years, Miriam Juan Estrella has not returned to Michoacán, where she was born. She was four when her family decided to emigrate to Southern California. Her father, a painter and a carwash attendant who can not read or write, wanted his children to attain an university degree in this country.
A Spanish and Mathematics student at Cal Poly Pomona University, Juan Estrella says she was thrilled to learn of the program that connects Dreamers to their country of origin, even though there is no guarantee that DACA will continue to exist during the Trump Administration.
"We are all afraid to think that DACA will be terminated while we are in Mexico," she warns. "But I'm going to take the risk of going because I want to know where I am from."
One of Juan Estrella's plans is to replicate this study abroad program model at Cal Poly Pomona, which is one of the last state universities in California to open a support center for undocumented students. She also wants to take advantage of the fact that a legal re-entry to the U.S. would be registered in her record.
"If I do not do this trip I will live my whole life wondering: 'what would have happened?,'" she says.
Source: Univision (Spanish)
