“I definitely feel a huge relief to know that there will be a president that will not try to deport me,” a DACA recipient said.
President-elect Joe Biden has made it clear that he will rectify the damage President Donald Trump has caused to immigrants in the US. Those promises, which include creating a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, mean everything to the immigration community.
RELATED: Joe Biden Admits Mistakes in Immigration During Obama Administration. Here’s His Plan to Reform Immigration.
“I definitely feel a huge relief to know that there will be a president that will not try to deport me and thousands of Dreamers,” Reyna Montoya, founder of the Arizona-based immigrant-support organization Aliento, told The Americano.
Montoya, who is protected from deportation under DACA, as is her brother, said Biden’s presidency would bring hope to many immigrants in the US, but added that she would hold the president-elect accountable for his promises.
“I am cautiously optimistic and have a lot of questions about the rollout of the reinstatement of DACA,” she said. “I really hope Biden fulfills his promise of reinstating the program and lets other Dreamers who did not apply be able to apply. But ultimately, I hope that there are more serious attempts of having a permanent solution for Dreamers and undocumented people.”
According to CBS News, Biden will loosen Trump’s immigration restrictions, including moving to fully restore DACA, which protects an estimated 640,000 undocumented immigrants that came to the US as children.
RELATED: Being a Dreamer Is Traumatic. But I Turned Fear Into Action.
Some of the questions that Reyna has for Biden are how he plans to make DACA permanent, and whether his immigration proposal will be put in his place through an executive order or through Congress. She’s also wondering how he plans to reunify the 666 migrant children that remain without their parents after they were separated at the border. Biden has said that he will create a task force to work at reunification with their parents but has yet to explain the details of that plan.
READ MORE: 545 Migrant Children Aren’t Missing Their Parents. It’s Actually 666 Migrant Children.
Angélica Guzmán, who lives in Utah and also has DACA protection, said she’s very excited to see how Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris implement their immigration plan, not just to DACA recipients but to all undocumented immigrants.
“When we saw the election results on Saturday, I think it’s a feeling that a lot us immigrants felt that a great weight had been lifted off of our shoulders after four years of a Trump administration,” Guzmán said to The Americano.
“We feel safer,” Guzmán said. “Biden will take care of immigrants and his relation with immigrants better than the Trump administration did.”
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Araceli Cruz is a Content Producer for The Americano. Her stories have been published in The Guardian, Teen Vogue, Refinery29, Mic, The Cut, Zora, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and others.
