What the Supreme Court’s decision on ‘Dreamers’ means for 107,000 immigrants in Texas
Fort Worth immigration advocates hailed the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday that reversed President Trump’s decision to end a program allowing immigrants who arrived in the United States illegally as children to stay.
“This is a good day to be a Dreamer and for all of us who love the Dreamers,” said Sal Espino, a Fort Worth attorney who has helped about 10 young immigrants apply for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — or DACA — program.
Most of those young people — sometimes called “Dreamers” — who applied for the DACA program are now adults who have completed college and have full-time jobs, said Espino, a former Fort Worth city councilmember.
More than 100,000 people in Texas are participants in the DACA program, including an estimated 35,000 people in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. The participants signed up between the time the program was created by President Obama’s administration in 2012 until President Trump’s administration moved to cancel it in 2017.
Those who participate in DACA can get a work permit and a driver’s license, several people familiar with the program said. Participation has to be renewed every two years.
DACA also aims to allow participants to travel out of the United States without fear of being blocked from re-entry, although some participants say they don’t take a chance on leaving the country and perhaps not being able to get back in.
For Brenda Balandran, 37, Thursday’s Supreme Court decision is a chance to take a deep breath, and hold out hope that she can one day become a citizen.
Balandran has a master’s degree in curriculum and teaches fifth grade at Luella Merrett Elementary School in west Fort Worth. And yet, despite her excellent job and credit worthiness, she has a difficult time getting a credit card because of her immigration status.
She has been in the program since she was 13 years old, when her family moved to Fort Worth from Mexicali, in Baja California, Mexico. Balandran’s siblings were born in the U.S. and are already citizens.
Balandran earned a bachelor’s degree in 2006, but couldn’t get full-time work because of her immigration status until the DACA program was created in 2012.
During that time, she went to beauty school and worked various jobs to make ends meet until she could legally become a teacher, while her colleagues from undergraduate school at the University of North Texas easily got jobs at public schools.
“Most of us just want to have a good life,” Balandran said. “All the Dreamers I know are either in college or high school and planning to go to college. We’re just hoping for something permanent, so we can continue our lives.”
Most of these children of immigrants that are part of the DACA program are now adults, said Douglas Interiano, chief executive of Proyecto Inmigrante ICS Inc., an organization that has helped several thousand people apply for DACA in the Fort Worth area.
“We have seen these folks grow up from being students to being professionals,” Interiano said in a phone interview. “They have bachelor’s and master’s degree, and some folks are enrolled in doctoral programs.”
“This DACA program has given them a life, an opportunity to work legally in this country and to pay taxes and do their life here,” he said.
Interiano said his organization was checking into whether the Supreme Court’s decision would open the DACA program to new applications, or allow those who participated in the program in the past to renew their status.
Immigrants rights groups also will watch to see whether the Trump administration might seek other methods of ending DACA, Interiano said.
Huyen Pham, a professor at Texas A&M law school in Fort Worth, said the Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t prevent the Trump administration from trying again to end the DACA program.
It’s unclear whether the administration will have time to try another tactic to end the DACA program between now and the November election.
“The bottom line is, the Supreme Court told the Trump administration, if you’re going to rescind the program you need to give better reasons for doing so,” she said.
This story was originally published June 18, 2020 at 1:38 PM.
