The Fort Worth ‘Dreamer’ who makes America great again
When Sandra Tovar was smuggled across the Mexico-Texas border as a teenager, it was not fear in pit of her stomach but anger.
Tovar knew the stories of crossing the border illegally, including of an aunt who died walking in the Arizona desert in her attempt to move to the United States.
Sitting in the back seat of a stranger’s car crossing the border at Eagle Pass, Texas, in April of 2001, wearing headphones and only understanding Spanish, she could not envision danger, or a new life.
“I was 13 and I just did not want to come,” Tovar said in a phone interview. “We left everything there in Mexico, including our clothes. We were never coming back. I didn’t want to leave my friends.”
The 32-year-old Tovar cried when on June 18 she heard the news that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law making Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) legal.
“I was sure it was going to be repealed,” she said. “I feel in my bones [President Donald Trump] is going to try to rescind it again. He will go back to the drawing board for a better argument. That’s what I think.”
Of the estimated 700,000 people who live in the U.S. who are called the “Dreamers,” Tovar is the example of the law working for the right reasons.
Nonetheless, she knows what a large number of Americans think when they hear “Dreamers.” Not by name, but people like her.
She understands the American who is upset not only by the Supreme Court’s surprise ruling, but the concept of people not immigrating the “right way.”
“I see the other side of it, that we are coming here and taking something away. That we are a drain,” she said. “People say, ‘Oh, you don’t pay taxes.’ I will show anyone my tax return. Or my parents’ tax returns. I know there are some undocumented people who don’t pay taxes, but the vast majority do because they want immigration reform.
“I know this, that if you go to the communities where there are undocumented people, those are the safest,” Tovar continued. “They are all scared that if they get into trouble, they are going to get deported. Don’t try to criminalize immigrants who are coming here for a better life. That is not fair. I have never taken anything from anyone. We are here contributing.”
No rational person could argue that Sandra Tovar is bad for America.
Tovar graduated from North Side High School in Fort Worth. She attended Texas A&M and earned her degree. Today, she works as a medical interpreter at Harris Hospital in Fort Worth.
Long before she was hired by Harris, just after graduating from A&M, Tovar was just another undocumented person who could only work illegally. She could not obtain a social security card, and thus she could not land a job worthy of her qualifications.
She was a college graduate cleaning houses. She held a degree from Texas A&M and she was cleaning churches. She was bright, motivated and she was babysitting to make money.
Then she threw every other available hour of her time into immigration reform, and educated herself to the laws.
She drove from Dallas to Arlington and Fort Worth organizing rallies, and people, to lobby for reform. She rode a school bus that had no air conditioning from Dallas to Washington, D.C., to protest in front of the Barack Obama White House.
In June of 2012, President Obama announced the creation of DACA. The program was not everything that people like Tovar wanted, but it was at least a way to remain in the United States without fear.
“I was crying so hard when he announced it. I knew I would be able to get a driver’s license and drive without fear of being stopped,” she said. “People don’t realize how the smallest things become dangerous when all you are trying to do is go to work.”
She said she had been previously stopped three times by the police for various moving violations.
“One of the times I was stopped and I had to stand on the edge of the street for 45 minutes because he wanted to know why I didn’t have a driver’s license,” she said.
Rather than admit what the police officer suspected, she knew better and said nothing.
A similar fear returned when Trump was elected in 2016, and he made repealing DACA a priority.
In 2018, she married her husband and the couple now resides in McKinney. That did not mean she was an automatic U.S. citizen.
“We are in Step 1 of the process. You have to send text messages, emails, photographs and prove the marriage is legitimate and you are not just doing it for the piece of paper,” she said.
It’s been 20 years since her parents paid a smuggler to get themselves, and their two children, into the United States. They may not be living the American dream, but they are living in America.
“When you have been involved in this movement for every day for so many years, every day matters,” Tovar said. “For a lot of us, this is a weight off our shoulders, and we also know this is not forever. But it’s still a win, and we will take it.”
This story was originally published June 28, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
