The decision was  a close 5 to 4 vote. Chief Justice John J. Roberts was the swing vote and wrote the majority opinion.

“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action.”

The decision states the Trump Administration did not provide sufficient reasons to terminate the program. The administration did not follow the proper procedures required and did not thoroughly assess how the ending of DACA would affect those whore relied on it.

“Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients,” Roberts wrote. “That dual failure raises doubts about whether the agency appreciated the scope of its discretion or exercised that discretion in a reasonable manner.”

Along with  Roberts, the majority opinion included liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

President Donald Trump tweeted his disfavor and urged the public to  reelect him.

These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020

Giovana Banuelos is a Dreamer and a student at California State University San Bernardino. She shared on twitter how relieved she was shortly after hearing DACA will continue.

I have been so anxious ever since this month started because of this big decision that was to be made. This could’ve changed my life forever and destroyed the future I have been working so hard on BUT WOW.. this was amazing news. GREAT WAY to start my day. I am in tears #DREAMER https://t.co/tZCAXwGelP

— Giovana Banuelos (@Banuelos_gio) June 18, 2020

DACA was first announced by former President Barack Obama in 2012. But in 2017 the Trump administration announced its plan to end it. The immigration policy allowed people who were brought to the United States as children to apply for temporary status. This status prevents deportation and grants permission to work for two years.  When it expires  it can be renewed by recipients. Former President Barack Obama also responded to the decisions via Twitter.

Eight years ago this week, we protected young people who were raised as part of our American family from deportation. Today, I’m happy for them, their families, and all of us. We may look different and come from everywhere, but what makes us American are our shared ideals…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 18, 2020

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Monica Sibri is a Dreamer who isn’t protected by DACA. Not because she didn’t apply or because she was “lazy,” as members of the current administration have stated, but because she came to the U.S. from Ecuador three months after her 16th birthday, making her ineligible for the program.

The term “Dreamer” originally came from the DREAM Act, which was a legislation proposed by representatives of both parties. In 2012, Barack Obama’s enactment of DACA was a compromise based on the proposals of the act and they, too, called themselves “Dreamers.” Young people like Sibri, although not protected by DACA, have used the word as a way to empower themselves.

“The way someone reacts to you when you say you’re a ‘Dreamer’ than when you’re undocumented is completely different,” Sibri, 25, said.”By saying that you’re undocumented, it assumes that you’re not in school or you’re this person who’s working in cleaning or you likely crossed the border, but when you say you’re a ‘Dreamer,’ people assume differently.”

According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank that studies global immigration patterns, an estimated 3.6 million people were brought to the U.S. before their 18th birthdays, making the focus on the almost 800,000 DACA recipients seem like an overlook of the larger issue of child immigration.

Sibri’s father decided to uproot their family when Ecuador’s currency changed in 2000 from the Ecuadorian Sucre to the U.S. Dollar, and he lost his managerial position at a candle company.

Her parents came to the U.S. to establish a life in Staten Island, separating the family for five years.
“I became an adult really young,” Sibri said. “I had to take care of my two younger sisters.”

When she learned she was undocumented and about the negativity surrounding it, she started calling herself a “Dreamer.” Sibri said that this helped her to confidently pursue higher education at the College of Staten Island where she graduated last year with a degree in American politics, policy and advocacy.

Since the law does not require one to disclose their immigration status, especially in educational facilities, Sibri maintained this persona, but never received any actual funds or special resources because of it. She explained that it created a shield against the stereotypes placed on undocumented individuals.

“My passion for creating a network of support begun with talking about the barriers I experienced myself. In college, I was often questioned about my immigration status and when letting them know that I was undocumented I got concerned looks, followed by a list of questions as to how I was in school,” Sibri said. “When talking about this, I learned through speaking to the network that this was happening in all spaces, from the school’s scholarship to the academic department, from the registration office to the office of financial aid, from the classroom to the soccer field.”

Sibri’s solution to this was to create the City University of New York  Dreamers, an organization for those with protected and unprotected status in the college system. Today, she serves on the advisory board for the program and has gone on to help initiate a larger group for “Dreamers” after she graduated from college and realized the same resources weren’t set up to foster undocumented individuals after graduation.

“DACA recipients often assume that I am a DACA recipient because of my work, and often when they learned of my status, they share tears with me,” Sibri said. “We just cry together.”

She said that she knows other undocumented students who have adopted the identity “dreamer” or assumed the societal benefits of a DACA recipient, but that it becomes much more complex upon graduating from higher education.

“(Post-grad), undocumented students begin to realize there are some things they have to navigate around and that there are potential barriers to achieving their dreams,” said Cristina Velez, staff attorney for the Immigration Defense Fund at New York University.

Sibri has been pushing against that narrative through her work at a nonprofit called Ignite, which aims to empower college-aged women to become active in their community and eventually run for office.

“I thought to myself, I’m undocumented, I might be in the process of getting deported. What do I do in the meantime?” Sibri said. “Democrats and Republicans in office are not representing me so I have to train the next generation to represent their communities like they’re supposed to.”

Now, Sibri and the more than 11 million undocumented individuals in the U.S. have nothing to do but wait — wait to see if a clean DREAM Act is passed or if they have to bargain a possible road to citizenship and protected status with Republican efforts to get a border wall and an end to “chain migration.”

“I think there is a glimmer of hope right now that if DREAM Act does pass then some (undocumented individuals) would finally have some opportunity to work in the United States and to have status,” Velez said. “For them, probably seeing the benefits of DACA for their peers must be very destructive and difficult at times. And I’m sure it would be even more of a blow if the DREAM Act did not come to pass.”

For Sibri, it will be more than a blow. She is part of what she calls a “mixed-status” family; her younger brother is a U.S. citizen while the rest of her family is undocumented. As the March 5 deadline approaches for congressional agreement on the future of “Dreamers” and consequently undocumented individuals alike, Sibri and her family are at peril of being separated once again. Deportation has become more of a reality for undocumented individuals than ever before. Sibri, said she constantly lives in fear of deportation and options may be running out.

“As much as I would love to continue fighting, my timeline in New York is dependent on us getting some sort of legislation in the next five years. If not, I will have to self-deport,” Sibri said, referring to undocumented individuals leaving a country where they could face deportation before ICE reaches them. “What else can I do? We are living day by day without being able to look ahead.”

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Ricardo Aca swayed nervously behind a cluster of microphones before he disclosed to the group of protesters, counter-protesters and press that he was a DREAMer, a status that he could lose in 10 months if congressional action isn’t taken. Aca was speaking at a rally in downtown New York City today in support of a clean DREAM Act, as the third and ultimately final day of the government shutdown began.  

Six years ago, Aca was an undocumented immigrant working as a busboy at the Trump SoHo Hotel. Today, he has legal status and an associates degree in commercial photography. He is working towards a bachelors in international affairs at Baruch College. But with less than a year of certainty left and with Congress using DACA recipients as a leverage between party lines, Aca has decided to use his voice as his defense.

“We are here today because we condemn Donald Trump and congressional Republican leaders who have forced a government shutdown by insisting on Trump’s racist border wall and other anti-immigration policies,” Aca said.

Approximately nine hours after the rally, President Trump signed a bill that would reopen the government, funding it for the next three weeks and simultaneously putting a delay on legislative action for the DREAMers. This uncertainty has created a limbo for most recipients of the program and also puts those who are close to their renewal period ending at risk for deportation, which is why many of them have laid low in recent months. But not Aca, who interns at Make the Road New York, a public advocacy group for immigrant communities.  

“Because if I don’t fight for myself then nobody is going to do it for me. I need to fight not only for myself but also for my parents who have fought for me my entire life,” Aca said. “They deserve dignity and justice and so do those 11 million undocumented immigrants, and if I don’t do that nobody else is going to do it for me.”

Aca is one of the nearly 800,000 recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that was devised by the Obama administration in 2012 to allow for undocumented immigrants who entered the country as minors to defer deportation.

Under the current administration, the program has been used as leverage against the Democrats in exchange for reinforcing stricter immigration laws, ultimately leading to the government shutting down on Jan. 19.

“This is where I consider my home. I pay taxes over here,” Aca said. “This is where I go to school. This is where my family and my friends are and so for congress not to be able to come up with a fix that is more permanent is very upsetting.”

The 27-year-old came to the U.S. from Puebla, Mexico, when he was 14 years old. Aca’s mom had pursued legal routes to come to the country but when those failed she found a job as a seamstress in a factory in New York and later arranged for Aca and his younger sister to cross the border through Arizona.

“(Congress) doesn’t care about people of color or immigrants who come to this country to work hard,” said LaShonda Lawson, a speaker at the rally who works as a security guard at the Statue of Liberty. “America should stand for freedom and inclusiveness. That is what I think about every day when I go to work. I see hundreds of people come to the Statue of Liberty because she is a symbol of freedom.”

Most DACA recipients file for their renewal every two years in pursuit of that freedom. And at Monday’s rally, Aca shared what he and his fellow DREAMers have been doing since President Trump rescinded the program in September 2017.

“Instead of enjoying my life I have been constantly in the streets having to have my voice be heard because I know I deserve to be here,” Aca said. “This (amendment in the Senate) is only a temporary fix on a larger issue.”

Currently, the state of New York contains the third largest population of DREAMers, which has created a need for public officials and advocates to hold rallies, hearings and conferences in light of the recent attacks to the program. One of those officials leading the fight for young people like Aca is Carlos Menchaca, who serves as the city’s Chair of the Committee on Immigration.

“We are in front of Federal Plaza in New York City where New Yorkers from every corner of this city, like Ricardo, are saying one thing clearly: we want a DREAM Act now,” Menchaca said.

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A panel of Latino leaders met yesterday at New York University’s Law School to discuss their governance in the age of Trump after the president announced the rescinding of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) bill on Sept. 5.

Withdrawal from this policy would put almost 800,000 undocumented young adults at risk of deportation, one of them being Peter Hernandez, who feels like the Latino community hasn’t done enough for him and the hundreds of thousands of DREAMers alike.

“I wish they could convince and advocate more for us and talk more to the Republican senators – tell and share our stories with them so they can know what kind of people we are,” Hernandez said. “We are not bad people and we’re just here so we can make a life for ourselves and we’re doing everything right.”

The bill, which was enacted in 2012 by an executive order during President Obama’s last term, is an immigration policy that allows minors like Hernandez, who initially entered the U.S. illegally, an opportunity to receive legal delayed action from deportation as well as eligibility for a work permit for a period of two years, with option for renewal.

The Oaxaca native moved to Texas with his mother, father and sister at the age of seven. His father began working as a landscaper and his mother sold items at the local flea market. Hernandez applied for the DACA program after he graduated from college, the year it went into law.

“The things I think students are most concerned about (in Latino representation) is that some of the folks who are in charge are the same ones that were in charge when I was college and at some point the different civil rights communities need to make space for other (racial communities),” said Myrna Perez, a member of the panel, hosted by the Brennan Center for Justice and an adjunct faculty at both Columbia and NYU law schools. “People are upset that there is not room for them to grow, not that there isn’t space.”

Perez, along with her colleagues, believe that the journey to representation in the Latino community is going to be an incremental one but that even the small victories should be feted.

Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law hosted a panel with (left) NALEO Educational Fund Northeast Director Roberto Frugone, former Hispanic National Bar Association President Robert Maldonado, New York City Council Member Antonio Reynoso, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law Voting Rights and Elections Project Director Myrna Perez, National Institute for Latino Policy President Angelo Falcon. Photo by Farnoush Amiri

One of the people actively leading the charge for undocumented students like Hernandez is 21-year-old Jessica Calderon. The NYU student has been at the forefront of the fight for immigration advocacy, and now DACA.

As a first generation Peruvian-American, Calderon felt the need to fill a void in her community. The politics and Latin American studies major has worked for a slew of nonprofits here in New York City and at NYU Washington D.C. as a part of her study abroad program.

“Working with these DACA applicants last summer sort of changed my life, and after that, I knew I wanted to go into a profession where I can serve the immigrant community,” Calderon said after her months spent filling applications for roughly 20 DACA recipients.

For Calderon, it’s not the number of Latino leaders in power that is the issue in their community, but the ideology and policies that they set forth.

“A lot of times, the people that are representing us, the Latino ‘elites,’ are not representative of our entire community, the most vulnerable of our community,” Calderon said. “For example, a Marco Rubio is not representing a low-income, undocumented worker’s needs. It’s crazy that we believe we won the battle once we get (Latino members) into congress, but really we need to get (our community) to vote on the ideas towards progressive change.”

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