Why Should Delaware Care?
The federal Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program aimed to protect immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children while a pathway toward citizenship was developed, giving hope to about a half million young people. That dream has faded though, as court challenges have closed it to new applicants and now nearly 900 Delawareans who would otherwise be eligible for it are caught in limbo.
Milli Bravo remembers a mango tree.
She recalled the golden stone fruit stretching down from the branches of the tree in her grandmother’s yard. The fruit would eventually fall to the ground and lay bare its rich yellow flesh for the flies to nibble.
The tree is one of only three memories Bravo has of Ecuador, the South American country sandwiched between Peru and Colombia in the northwest corner of the continent — despite living the first eight years of her life there.
Bravo, 26, immigrated to the United States with her family in 2007. She was told that her family was just going to visit her aunt in the U.S., but they ended up staying.
Her family arrived in August, unknowingly missing the cutoff date to be eligible to apply for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) by two months. DACA requirements mandate that applicants must have continuously lived in the U.S. since June 15, 2007.
Even those arriving at the time would have no idea how important the difference in weeks would mean for their children.
The cutoff date would not be established until DACA was created in 2012 — five years after Bravo first arrived. Many of Bravo’s peers successfully became DACA recipients, known as “Dreamers,” while she was locked out, despite meeting the criteria other than her arrival date.
“I just missed it, it was really tough,” she said.
Hundreds of ‘Dreamers’
DACA is a program created through executive action by then-President Barack Obama to provide work authorization and temporary relief from deportation to immigrants who were brought to the country as children. The program, which applicants must renew every two years, was intended to help young adults attend school and work lawfully in the U.S.
To be eligible, applicants must have arrived before they were 16 years old, have not been convicted of a felony and be in school or serving in the military.
Bravo is one of hundreds of Delawareans who were brought to the country as children and have been largely excluded from the protections of DACA. Many of these would-be Dreamers are students or professionals who meet the program requirements but have been shut out due to federal litigation or inadequate applications.
These young unprotected immigrants meet the arrival date and eligibility criteria for DACA but haven’t been able to receive protections because the program largely hasn’t approved any applications since 2017.
Nearly 900 Delawareans were immediately eligible for DACA under the original 2012 rules, but were not protected by it as of 2023, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research think tank that tracks the DACA program.
Nationwide, there are an estimated 625,000 immigrants who were eligible but were not protected as of 2023.
As of June, Delaware has only 1,150 active DACA recipients, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data.
Delawareans unprotected by DACA have had to navigate their lives while undocumented and under the looming threat of deportation. They were barred from accessing earned scholarships without a Social Security number, leaving them to pay out of pocket or, sometimes, be relegated to paying international student tuition rates despite spending nearly all of their life in America.
Without work authorization, they are also forced to pursue entrepreneurship, small business ownership or independent contract work.
Still, many are attaining higher education, including graduate degrees, with the help of scholarships for undocumented students and Delaware universities. Three students at Delaware State University are attaining their undergraduate degrees while fully undocumented under TheDream.US scholarship.
With no new Dreamers and with rigid eligibility demands locked in place, the “children” of DACA have aged, and the program’s size has continuously dwindled over the years.
There are now less than 100,000 DACA recipients aged 30 or younger as of August, according to USCIS data. Meanwhile, nearly 15% of current recipients are over the age of 40.
In 2014, Bravo’s dad was deported to Ecuador.
She came to hate her birthday in the subsequent years. The annual occurrence marked another year away from her father, and one more tearful phone call to mark the occasion.
“The first five to seven years when we were [in the U.S.] was just about surviving,” Bravo said.
“I need to go back, my family’s back there, I shouldn’t be here,” she remembers thinking at the time.
For Bravo, the mango tree became a symbol of a home once forgotten, and a relentless beacon calling her back.
She wishes to return to her grandmother’s tree that has hung in her memory. She wants to eat of its fruit and see her family — once again.
Missing a call
Blanca remembered having her shaved.
Blanca, a junior at Delaware State University and a native of Acapulco, Mexico, who asked to not use her last name due to safety concerns, came to the U.S. when she was 3 years old. Blanca, 21, flew into the U.S. with her sister as their mother crossed the U.S.-Mexico border by foot.
The siblings traveled under the legal papers of another little boy and girl who were sent back to Mexico after their mother died attempting to cross the border.
Blanca was shaved bald in order to pass as the little boy.
“My hair did grow back — clearly,” Blanca said, motioning to her long dark hair.
In high school, Blanca was offered over $200,000 in scholarships. Without a Social Security number, however, she couldn’t access a dime.
In 2018, as Blanca and her sister were in high school, they applied for DACA. The siblings hired lawyers, submitted fingerprints, photos, paid a $3,000 fee, and had their application — the first record the government had that Blanca even existed — accepted by USCIS.
Now, they just waited for the agency to approve the petition.
“It just never came,” Blanca said. “The government did not know I was here until I applied.”
She wasn’t approved because new DACA applicants have been largely barred from the program since it’s been entangled in federal litigation since 2017, when then-President Donald Trump’s administration sought to wind down the program. Only immigrants who had DACA before September 2017 have since been able to renew their protections.
Blanca’s lawyers promised to inform her if they ever heard anything regarding her petition.
She’s still waiting for a phone call today.
A post-DACA generation
Sarah, who also asked to not use her last name, arrived in America in May 2007, one month before the June 15 cutoff to be eligible for DACA. But a paper trail of her arrival from Ecuador didn’t begin until the fall of that year, which included vaccine records and school registration documents.
Therefore, in the eyes of the federal government, Sarah wasn’t in the country until after the deadline had passed — making her ineligible for DACA.
A 24-year-old graduate student studying social work at the University of Delaware, Sarah has been denied entry into DACA twice, in 2015 and 2016, because of insufficient evidence of her arrival in May 2007.
Sarah’s older sister arrived with her and was granted DACA a year prior to Sarah applying with much of the same supporting evidence.
“I was very confused and just very upset,” Sarah said.
Now, she’s barred from ever applying again.
Sarah submitted her second application just before then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the wind-down of DACA in September 2017, which was subsequently challenged in court.
The attempt to discontinue the program began a yearslong legal battle that has shut out any new applicants to this day — leaving DACA to slowly bleed out recipients as the remainder get older.
Today, eight in 10 DACA recipients are 31 years old and older, according to USCIS data. The number of active DACA recipients has decreased by nearly 155,000 from 2017 to 2024, per USCIS, which would include those who have achieved full citizenship, obtained a green card, left the country, or simply stopped pursuing renewal.
A once-forgotten home
Milli Bravo wept when she saw the mango tree again. She was alone, and she cried.
Bravo returned to Ecuador in 2021 after years of living in the U.S. The country was a different world that she had completely forgotten about, she remarked.
She thought she would cry when she saw her dad. Years had passed since the two had last embraced.
“It was kind of like turning into a 3-year-old, like a toddler, and looking for their dad,” Bravo said. “It was just this weird, pure happiness that I don’t experience very much.”
When the pair finally found each other, they hugged — and it was like nothing. Years and distance had not altered their relationship.
After years of somber phone calls, no tears were shed. Bravo’s dad hurried her over to the car because the parking meter was running out of time.
“It was like, ‘Oh, OK, everything is good in life,’” Bravo said.
Bravo doesn’t have to cry on her birthday anymore. After seeing her father, she can now celebrate turning another year older.
“I didn’t want to survive anymore. I just wanted to actually enjoy.”
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