Where do we go from here? Is there a future here? What’s going to happen?

I’m sure these questions are running through many people’s minds after the news of the decision to bring DACA to an end emerged last Tuesday. The threat had been lingering over everyone’s heads at the very start of Trump taking office, and now it has come alive if only through his summoning of Congress.

I remember when I was in high school I did a semester abroad up in Maine and one of the teachers was telling us something along the lines of a local restaurant employing illegal immigrants that were then deported, and how hearing anything about deportation was so unheard of in Maine. The teacher then turned to me and observed that I didn’t have the same reaction as the others of surprise or shock, I was just listening. It’s not that I’m heartless or ignorant really but I guess growing up in a Hispanic household with Telemundo always blaring in the background, you learn a lot. The teacher wasn’t taking a jab at my ethnicity though, he was making the distinction of Maine and New York because of how normalized things seem to be in New York. With Telemundo blaring in the background about deportations that are already happening and with all of the friends I've made through the years that are immigrants, I struggle to understand how anyone can think this is okay.

It is even more difficult to understand when you come from a family of immigrants and have lived in a city full of immigrants your entire life. How is it that we expect these DACA recipients to "go back to where they came from" when they grew up down the block from us all? When they came here as children and were raised with us as their friends? When all they know is the USA? They've been raised learning American History and watching the 4th of July fireworks. But with the end of DACA, they must go back "home"?

With the end of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the program that inspired hope in so many families of progression and strength, the blaring TV in the background is now in our faces and it won’t turn off this reality that those who depended on the program now face.

There are currently a lot of questions that haven’t been answered and won’t be answered until Congress makes some decisions. In the meantime, these kids who may only know America as their home have to be burdened with the threat of deportation. These dreamers who were given hope of a better future — ANY future — are now having that stripped away and they may need to go back to a country that they know nothing of.

These kids who were raised American, who know the names of their neighbors, of the deli around the block, of the middle school down the street, of the park where they learned how to ride a bike, the street they fell down in and scraped their knee in. All of those memories were created here in the USA, not back home in the country their parents and families may have grown up in. These kids are being sent back to meet cousins, family members, close friends of the family; roads and cities that they have never met or seen before.

These kids are being sent back to a country that although they may have been born in, they are unfamiliar with. Imagine being a tourist in the country that you were born in and maybe not even knowing the language. All those years of learning how to write out 'phone' instead of 'fone.' All the effort put into passing your classes and being able to brag about getting into a great university has now been stripped from these families.

DACA is not just about allowing one special brilliant kid to stay in the US, it’s about acknowledging that these kids are what make America. Every single one of us, DACA recipients included, deserves a shot at something great and we can’t just strip that from someone who was depending on it. We cannot allow the deportation of 800,000+ flourishing children and teens and adults who were raised in this country that they have called home.

This is not the end of the road and there is still a lot to be said in the next coming weeks in how Congress will choose to proceed. Until then I #standwithdreamers in a fight that they shouldn't need to have. How can we even stand united without the unity of the people who give this country so much worth, without the immigrants who are ALL around us every single day? The answer is that we can't and we won't because we are a country of dreamers and we won't go down without a fight.