Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Young immigrants celebrate Supreme Court ruling on DACA protections

Dreamers React to DACA Decision

Steve Marcus

Dreamers Rafael Lopez and Astrid Silva pose at the Rafael Rivera Community Center, following the Supreme Court’s decision on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), Thursday, June 18, 2020.

Dreamers React to DACA Decision

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) advocate Astrid Silva responds to a question during an interview at the Rafael Rivera Community Center, following the Supreme Court's DACA decision, Thursday, June 18, 2020. Launch slideshow »

Three decades ago, Rafael Lopez’s family brought him from Mexico to Nevada. He was only a year old.

Lopez, now 31, has never been to Mexico. He’s grown up here and is living under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects undocumented immigrants who came to America as children from deportation.

Before DACA, Lopez could not get a driver’s license or state identification card. He had no Social Security number. Life without those is “incredibly difficult” in the United States, he said.

With DACA in place, some of the fears of being undocumented subside, he said.

“You can just go to bed and calmly go to sleep (thinking) ‘OK, ICE is not going to come look for me, I’m going to be OK,’” he said.

Lopez and other DACA recipients, known as Dreamers, have been stuck in legal limbo since 2017, when President Donald Trump announced plans to rescind the program. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today that Trump cannot end the program for now.

Lopez said he was relieved, although the court’s decision came as a shock to him.

“I was on the cynical side,” he said, “I think part of it has to do with the political climate that we have just been going through over the last couple of years with the Trump administration. I actually did think that they were most likely going to cancel DACA.”

He wasn’t the only one pessimistic about the case’s outcome.

Astrid Silva, the executive director and founder of Dream Big Nevada, a nonprofit organizations advocating for immigrants, had prepared tweets for the adverse ruling she thought the court would hand down.

“I didn’t prepare anything for a positive decision,” she said. “I was kind of in shock for a little bit.”

Silva, also a DACA recipient, came to the United States in 1992. She was 4 years old, and her family came to meet up with her father, who was living in the country.

Silva said legislation is now needed to permanently establish DACA protections that apply to 14,265 Nevadans.

“If not, we’re going to be dealing with this every few months, weeks, years, and this is no way to live,” Silva said.

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., called for Congress to “provide permanent relief for Dreamers and finally give them the opportunity to become full citizens of this country.”

Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen voiced her support for the DREAM Act, which would provide temporary residency to immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors, as well as a path to citizenship.

“While I am pleased to see the court conclude that the Trump Administration’s decision to terminate DACA was arbitrary and capricious, we need to continue fighting for a permanent solution for our nation’s Dreamers,” Rosen said in a statement.

Nevada Democratic Reps. Dina Titus, Steven Horsford and Susie Lee each made statements in support of the Dream and Promise Act, which creates a path toward legal citizenship for certain undocumented immigrants. The act has passed the House.

“Donald Trump’s decision to terminate DACA was always evil at its core,” Titus said in a statement. “Now we know that it was also illegal.”

Gov. Steve Sisolak also applauded the court’s ruling but said there was still more work to be done.

“Dreamers are Nevadans,” Sisolak said on Twitter. “They’re our neighbors, teachers & friends. They deserve to live and work in our state & country without the constant fear of deportation.”

Lopez said he’s pessimistic the issue will be resolved during a time of such political division, but he’s glad the Supreme Court gave Dreamers a reprieve.

“I don’t know if this is borrowed time. I don’t know what the Trump administration will do next,” Lopez said. “It’s so unpredictable.”

Lopez said Dreamers were raised as typical American kids, and “at the end of the day, we all feel like an American at heart.”