MARIA SANTOS IS A DREAMER, a recipient of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that allows those who were brought to America without documents as young children to remain in the country. Like many, she lives in a liminal state, dependent on the good graces of politicians to decide if she gets to stay in the only country she’s ever really known.
But Maria isn’t just waiting around. Through her work as Director of Operations for the Santa Fe Dreamers Project (SFDP), she connects other immigrants like her with the legal help and resources they need to protect the lives they’ve labored to carve out in America.
We sat down with Maria and two of her co-workers — Jessica Noemi Aguirre is a Staff Attorney with the Dreamers Project, and Miles Tokunow is the Executive Director.
We had a long internal conversation about whether we wanted to feature Maria, simply because we’re concerned about what the new administration could do to its critics, especially those who are immigrants. In the end, she wanted to tell her story, and we are awed by her courage.
Maria, tell us your story.
Maria: I was brought to Des Moines, Iowa, where I grew up, when I was a year-and-a-half. When I turned 10, my parents had to leave the country and my older sister took guardianship of me. I had no legal status. I was put through school thanks to my older sister. She had to quit her high school. She had barely turned 18. She took responsibility of me and put me through school.
How did you get involved with the Dreamers Project?
Maria: When I was 17 I met Allegra Love, the founder. She was doing a presentation in my class about DACA and I approached her. She said, You qualify for DACA. Here is my card. Give me a call. That was when I first got my initial DACA. I’ve had DACA since I was 17. I was able to graduate high school and then came to work here. I have two American citizen children. My daughter is nine and my son is five.
In addition to DACA, what other kinds of immigration cases do the Santa Fe Dreamers Project take?
Jessica: Family-based immigration, humanitarian work for survivors of violent crimes, survivors of domestic violence, special immigrant juvenile status. Also helping people apply for citizenship, naturalization, green card renewal. The origins started first with DACA and now we have a whole scope of what we do.
You are a nonprofit. Do clients pay on a sliding scale?
Miles: Yes. Nobody gets turned around for lack of being able to pay. For all the humanitarian cases — for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, young folks who have been abandoned, neglected, none of those services do people pay for. Only for work like petitioning for green card renewals.
How broken is our immigration system?
Maria: I have been in this country since I was a year-and-a-half. I am 29, and I currently hold DACA, having to renew every two years.
Until this day, there is no path for me to become a citizen of this country. Even though I pay my taxes, even though I have no criminal background, even though I have two U.S. citizen children, and this country is the only country I know as a home. I’m just one of many, and I can see how politics and the new president coming in uses immigration and uses us as a weapon. It’s going continue to happen because how broken the system is.
Jessica: Let me give you an example. Individuals who are survivors of violent crime can apply for what’s called a U visa. These individuals will be waiting 20 years to obtain their status. That’s not even their permanent residency, just the status. Because every year, only 10,000 individuals can be approved and every year since about 2015, 50,000 individuals apply. It’s creating an insurmountable backlog at this point.
Another example: If someone otherwise eligible for DACA leaves the country and reenters, crosses the border, they get slapped with what’s called the permanent bar. There are no exceptions for minors, so we have individuals with families… say one of the grandparents passed away and they said, you know what, let’s go to the funeral and then let’s come back. Some of those individuals have a permanent bar and will not be able to obtain status in any way until that is resolved.
Their parents took them back for a visit, and as a result they are banned?
Jessica: Exactly, unfortunately.
Santa Fe is a sanctuary city. What does that mean?
Miles: There’s no legal definition of what a sanctuary city is. It’s been politicized quite a bit. But the essence of what “sanctuary policy” is, is that our city’s resources will not be used to carry out the work of federal immigration officers. Our police aren’t going to be doing the work of detaining folks. We’re not going to be allowing ICE to be in our court systems.
Our cops aren’t going to demand that people show them their papers.
Miles: Exactly.
How will this change during the new administration?
Jessica: I fundamentally believe that there are draconian policies coming down the pipeline. We look at who this incoming administration is surrounding itself with, its proposed cabinet, the proposed border czar, the people who are going to be driving policy forward. I think this administration is adamant on being as cruel and as inhumane as possible to move its message forward, its vilification of immigrants forward. What we’re speculating will be forthcoming; I don’t think any of it is outside of the realm of possibility.
Maria: I think we’re a target, being a sanctuary city; being so vocal about how we’re resisting his policies will encourage him and his team to attack those cities first.
What’s the nightmare scenario?
Jessica: Everything’s on fire all the time. One of the big ones has been his threats of mass deportation. One of my big fears is, he starts using expedited removals as a tool. Expedited removals function as a way for low-level immigration officers to remove someone without due process. That gets rid of the need for having to see an immigration judge, because that system’s already backlogged — there’s three million cases.
I thought expedited removal is only used right on the border.
Jessica: Well, what if we allow any ICE officer or CBP officer, we expand that power? You’re going to have this massive movement towards processing these expedited removals. It’s not going to happen immediately, so what do you do with all these individuals? As we know with the Japanese internment camps, that Supreme Court case [Korematsu] was never overturned. It’s never been heard again by the Supreme Court.
One of my father’s earliest memories was of his neighbors returning from the camps. They were built by the Army. Do you fear the use of the military?
Jessica: Of course. I think he could deputize the armed forces to carry it out. Is there a world where we suddenly see the rise of internment camps again for undocumented or even mixed-status families? The reality is you are going to have not just undocumented folks trapped into the system, you are going to have people who do have status, who are even citizens.
Maria: With this election, personally, I am in panic. Even my kids are in danger. What if I were to get picked up? I’m now thinking of power of attorneys, who’s going to take my kids, are we going to leave the country? What’s going to happen with them? It’s a lot of unanswered questions.
The nightmare scenario for you must be that they come home from school and you aren’t there.
Maria: Yeah. Having to explain that to a nine-year-old and a five-year-old isn’t easy, especially because they ask me, Mommy, why can’t you vote? Everybody is voting, and so she says, At what age can I vote? I tell her, At 18. Being this nine-year-old response, she says When I become 18, I’m gonna vote for you, mommy.
How do you explain to your children that they are citizens of this country and their parents are not?
Maria: Unfortunately, I had to do that about three years ago. I left the country on advanced parole (which lets Dreamers travel abroad) and we were put into inspection on our return. They separated my husband. They were with me and at that time my daughter was six or seven and she was like, Mommy, what’s going on? Why can’t we go home?
I had to have that conversation of I was not born here, you were, you can walk out, you are free to go. I am not, your dad is not. For us to be able to go home, they must ask us a lot of questions and they have to look at this paper. I showed her the paper. You see how it has my picture; they have to verify that it’s me, they have to take my picture, take my fingerprints. And she said, Mommy, but what if we can’t go back?
I can’t imagine the stress. How are you handling it?
Maria: I do a lot of therapy. Big one. Second one: I’m Catholic and I keep my religion in my heart. I am talking to God daily and saying, if this is the day, it’s the day, right? I am aware that I have a community that has my back, that if I do get picked up, I have a list of phone numbers I can call for help.
For me, Santa Fe has given me a sense of protection because of our legal system. There are a lot of resources to us that are not going to be found in Texas, that are not going to be found in Arizona. Santa Fe is, for the most part, giving me my children. And that is my treasure. I go to work every day knowing that the work that I’m doing, I am making a difference in someone’s life. And not just someone, mi gente.
If they do start round ups, how easy will be for the federal government to find you?
Maria: They have all my information. They know where I work, they know where I live for the past nine years, they know where my children go to school. They have every single piece of information to be able to do that.
What advice can you give to somebody who’s in your situation right now?
Maria: If you have children, get a power of attorney. Get all your records, all your birth certificates for your children, all their medical information, keep them safe, keep copies. If you have a mortgage, you start looking into that. Car payments as well. Start looking at who’s going to take those over, how your finances are going to be managed.
I think the last piece of it is, don’t let your fear overtake your body. Know your rights. Educate yourself, ask questions, go find resources. Start getting involved in what’s happening.
It reminds me of what someone prepares when they’re dying.
Maria: It sounds like that because it’s a reality. In the first Trump administration with the office, we saw a lot of people getting picked up. A lot of desperate parents, wives, children calling us and being like, Help me. What do I do? He has been picked up. What are my options? What do I need? What paperwork?
Beyond representing clients, how are you working against this?
Miles: We do direct legal representation. We will continue to do that. But the other things that we also do is community education. We’re going to be educating our community, educating our judiciary, educating partners, educating everybody who will listen. And advocacy. We’re going to be proactive at the state, working with as many people as possible to continue to do the pushback, because we know that comprehensive immigration reform isn’t going to happen at the federal level right now.
What should people and communities do if the worst happens?
Jessica: The onus is on the client to make decisions. We advise, we give them a breakdown of possibilities. However, the decision as to how to move forward if there are risks a particular individual wants to take, knowing those risks.
Anything Trump says is not real until it’s real. He can talk all he wants; until there’s an actual policy written and signed, it is not real and if it does become real, we’re gonna fight like hell. Are there going to be, unfortunately, people who don’t survive Trump? Yes, but we’re gonna fight like hell to ensure that as many people can survive Trump as possible.
Maria: My husband is a DACA recipient, I have my sister-in-law, my sister. There’s, around me, a lot of DACA recipients, and undocumented, and the conversations as a family that we’ve been having is, let’s wait and see what Trump does when he takes office first, and second, if things start to get really, really nasty, we are planning on leaving the country.
This is the only country you’ve ever known. Where would you go?
Maria: I have family in Mexico, but we would most likely not stay in Mexico. We still don’t have a clear answer of where we would land.
You would become refugees?
Maria: Yes. We are not willing to have our kids go through what his plan is.