Speaker 1: This is Latino USA, the radio journal of News and Kurturre.
Speaker 2: Latino USC Latin Latino USA.
Speaker 1: I'm Maria Inojosa. We bring you stories that are underreported
Speaker 1: but that mattered to you, overlooked by the rest of
Speaker 1: the media, and while the country is struggling to deal
Speaker 1: with these, we listen to the stories of Black and
Speaker 1: Latino Studios United, Latino Front, a cultural renaissance organizing at
Speaker 1: the forefront of the movement. I'm Maria Ino Jossa, No
Speaker 1: bayan or La Latino USA. Listener, Here's an episode from
Speaker 1: our archives. I was so happy on that September eleventh,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. I remember it was a slow morning
Speaker 1: that morning because that day for CNN, I was going
Speaker 1: to have a day off. I was going to work
Speaker 1: that night. I was going to be able to be
Speaker 1: with my kids. I could take them to school on
Speaker 1: their first day. And I even woke up early enough
Speaker 1: to go to the gym super early. I was walking
Speaker 1: back from the gym that morning, and I had my
Speaker 1: walkman on, Yes, a walkman. I was listening to the
Speaker 1: radio El Vasilone La Manana. It's a raunchy kind of
Speaker 1: morning show, shock jocks in Spanish, and a caller calls
Speaker 1: into the radio show and she's totally freaked out. She's screaming.
Speaker 1: She's saying that a plane has crashed into a tower
Speaker 1: at the World Trade Center. And the jockeys, the DJs,
Speaker 1: they're just like, yeah, yucking it up, like sure, uh huh.
Speaker 1: And then they said, oh my god, it's true. They
Speaker 1: heard the sirens in the background. I ran back to
Speaker 1: my apartment, ran up five flights of stairs. CNN had
Speaker 1: already called, and I was to go downtown to get
Speaker 1: as close as I could to the World Trade Center.
Speaker 1: I got on the subway and it was inside the
Speaker 1: subway with a bunch of others, scared New Yorkers that
Speaker 1: we realized that a second plane had hit.
Speaker 3: Just moments ago, so maybe eighteen minutes after the first impact,
Speaker 3: the second tower was impacted with what appeared to be
Speaker 3: another passenger plane.
Speaker 1: I got out of the subway or someplace around twenty
Speaker 1: third Street, and I started walking downtown and waves of
Speaker 1: people were already pushing their way uptown away from the
Speaker 1: World Trade Center, and their faces were filled with trauma.
Speaker 1: Cars basically had stopped. There was no movement, no traffic,
Speaker 1: nowhere to go their doors were opened and their car
Speaker 1: radios were tuned into the same radio station. It was
Speaker 1: a news station echoing through the streets.
Speaker 4: Ears, but they're obviously.
Speaker 1: That's when suddenly I saw the tower fall, the first one.
Speaker 5: I got the building, now I knew.
Speaker 1: I started screaming.
Speaker 6: Top Oh my god.
Speaker 1: CNN had told me to get to Saint Vincent's Medical
Speaker 1: Center that was just north of what would now be
Speaker 1: known as Ground zero. I gathered outside of that hospital
Speaker 1: with the New York Press Corps, and there was a
Speaker 1: sea of green and white coming out of the hospital doors.
Speaker 1: All of the nurses and doctors in their scrubs and
Speaker 1: white sheets, put over chairs so that they were ready
Speaker 1: to receive all of the wounded, all of the survivors.
Speaker 1: No one came. There are a lot of questions about
Speaker 1: you know, so where were you on September eleventh? Where
Speaker 1: were you when it happened? What do you remember? It's
Speaker 1: been twenty years, but that time hasn't dulled my memory.
Speaker 1: My home was under attack that day, and I'll never
Speaker 1: ever forget. From Utro Media and RX It's Latino, USA.
Speaker 1: I'm mariet Inojosa. Today nine to eleven, we look at
Speaker 1: how one catastrophic day altered the US's stance towards immigration
Speaker 1: that would affect it for decades to come. One thing
Speaker 1: that we all immediately knew on September eleventh, twenty years
Speaker 1: ago was that this event was going to resonate across
Speaker 1: time and borders. Almost three thousand people from more than
Speaker 1: ninety countries died on that day. Thousands more are dealing
Speaker 1: with lasting injuries, depression, and like me PTSD, including a
Speaker 1: lot of first responders, the ground zero cleanup workers, many
Speaker 1: of them who were undocumented, and people from the community.
Speaker 1: But even before those physical and mental traumas really manifested
Speaker 1: in full, very quickly, a new political reality emerged from fear.
Speaker 1: In that moment, people found themselves willing to grant the
Speaker 1: government control over just about anything that could be tied
Speaker 1: back to national security, believing that was the way to
Speaker 1: keep Americans safe from terrorism. And soon after that, the
Speaker 1: panic over keeping the country safe evolved into an ugly
Speaker 1: ongoing debate over yes immigration. Once again, politicians and journalists
Speaker 1: call for the tightening of US orders, toughening up our
Speaker 1: immigration system large and keeping people out.
Speaker 5: The public understands that strict enforcement of immigration laws is
Speaker 5: a very helpful way of stopping and reducing the terrorist threat.
Speaker 7: And you cannot put those two things in the separate
Speaker 7: boxes and deal with immigration over here in border security
Speaker 7: over here.
Speaker 5: I want the borders under our control.
Speaker 7: And I don't see anything either peculiar about that or
Speaker 7: unseemly are insensitive.
Speaker 1: Newsrooms were under pressure to defer to pro US narratives,
Speaker 1: and if you questioned any of this, well, that made
Speaker 1: you an unpatriotic American. A total crackdown on refugees and
Speaker 1: migrants would soon be underway, and this approach would inform
Speaker 1: the US government's next major moves, including the creation of
Speaker 1: the Department of Homeland Security, which did not exist before
Speaker 1: September eleventh. It also led to the dismantling of the
Speaker 1: ins the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and replacing it with
Speaker 1: several new agencies, including ICE, immigration and Customs Enforcement. But
Speaker 1: to really understand just how much nine to eleven changed
Speaker 1: the entire narrative around immigration in the United States, we've
Speaker 1: got to go back a bit further. Our producer Alejandra s.
Speaker 1: Aasad is going to take it from here.
Speaker 5: The first year of the New Millennium was one for
Speaker 5: the history books after surviving the y two K computer scare,
Speaker 5: we had the Sydney Summer Olympics.
Speaker 8: More than ten thousand athletes with the Olympic Games have
Speaker 8: come down under.
Speaker 5: The premiere of the hit reality series Survivor, the first
Speaker 5: crew to live on the International Space Station one lift
Speaker 5: off of.
Speaker 2: The Soyer's rocket, beginning the first expedition to the International space.
Speaker 5: And also in two thousand new US Census, the National
Speaker 5: Survey determined that more than two hundred and eighty one
Speaker 5: million people lived in this country, the largest number in
Speaker 5: its history up to that point, and in November, following
Speaker 5: a historically close and contentious election.
Speaker 9: By stand by, CNN right now is moving our earlier
Speaker 9: declaration of Florida back to the too close to cole column. Ah,
Speaker 9: this no longer is a victory four or Vice President Gore.
Speaker 4: Just moments ago, I spoke with George W.
Speaker 9: Bush and congratulated him on becoming the forty third president
Speaker 9: of the United States.
Speaker 2: Thirty seven days after Americans went to the polls, and
Speaker 2: now we have a winner.
Speaker 5: Now it can be said President elect Bush. Bush was
Speaker 5: elected with thirty five percent of the Latino vote, the
Speaker 5: highest LATINX turnout for Republican since Ronald Reagan in nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty four, and this was pretty significant. The Latino population
Speaker 5: had expanded by more than fifty percent over the last
Speaker 5: decade to more than thirty five million people. Latinos represented
Speaker 5: a rapidly growing voter block that couldn't be easily ignored anymore.
Speaker 5: Capitalizing on this political moment, the Bush administration introduced an
Speaker 5: agenda that indicated pro immigration reform was in the works,
Speaker 5: especially to help and benefit Mexicans. As the former governor
Speaker 5: of Texas, Bush had developed a friendly relationship with then
Speaker 5: Mexican President. We sent the fox that continued into his presidency.
Speaker 10: President, I want you to know that we consider you
Speaker 10: a friend of Mexico, a friend of Mexican people, in
Speaker 10: a friend of mine.
Speaker 5: In February two thousand and one, a joint US Mexico
Speaker 5: panel released recommendations for future immigration policy, including streamlining the
Speaker 5: process for Mexicans to attain visas and legal status in
Speaker 5: the US.
Speaker 11: We exchanged ideas about safe and orderly migration, a policy
Speaker 11: that respects individuals on both sides.
Speaker 5: Of the border, and according to reports from July two
Speaker 5: thousand and one, the White House was even considering offering
Speaker 5: permanent residency to undocumented Mexicans in the US. This move
Speaker 5: would have dramatically changed the lives of more than three
Speaker 5: million people in this country. That summer, Congress was deliberating
Speaker 5: several bills to offer protections and citizenship opportunities to immigrant
Speaker 5: farm workers, but come fall the bills were shelved. Nine
Speaker 5: to eleven had ushered in a new political atmosphere where
Speaker 5: pro immigrant legislation just didn't stand a chance. Instead, issues
Speaker 5: like securing borders and gathering intelligence became top priorities. For example,
Speaker 5: the Transportation Security Administration was created TSA. It also came
Speaker 5: with the new airport screening rules. That's why you have
Speaker 5: to take off your shoes at security or X rayal
Speaker 5: your electronics. The US Patriot Act was passed only forty
Speaker 5: five days after the attacks. It gave the government power
Speaker 5: to monitor your phone records and your Internet use, and
Speaker 5: access your personal records like individual finances. This was all
Speaker 5: done in the name of fighting terrorism. Nine to eleven
Speaker 5: also normalized anti immigrant attitudes on a national scale. The
Speaker 5: nineteen hijackers behind nine to eleven were all from Middle
Speaker 5: Eastern countries, and several arrived in the US while before
Speaker 5: the attacks, the idea that people born outside of this
Speaker 5: country could become its biggest threat turned into a mainstream
Speaker 5: policy priority almost overnight.
Speaker 2: Donald J.
Speaker 12: Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of
Speaker 12: Muslims entering the United States until our countries resent.
Speaker 5: Remember Donald Trump's Muslim ban just four years ago?
Speaker 10: What the hell is going on?
Speaker 5: One of the most obvious precedents for it was the
Speaker 5: Bush administrations National Security Entree Exit Registration System end SEERS
Speaker 5: for short. It was established within a year of nine
Speaker 5: to eleven.
Speaker 13: It was a special registration program for certain individuals that
Speaker 13: came from countries that had a historic tie to terrorism.
Speaker 13: We just had to give closer scrutiny to those individuals
Speaker 13: to make sure they had legitimate travel to the United States.
Speaker 5: For nearly a decade, non citizens entering the US had
Speaker 5: to register with the federal government. That meant giving their fingerprints, photos,
Speaker 5: and submitting to interrogation. They were monitored by immigration officials
Speaker 5: and tracked to make sure they left the country as intended.
Speaker 5: Overstaying their visas meant arrests, fines, and deportations. All men
Speaker 5: sixteen years in older from a list of twenty five
Speaker 5: countries were forced to participate in the nciers program. Twenty
Speaker 5: four of those countries were a majority Muslim, including Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt,
Speaker 5: and the United Arab Emirates. The four countries that the
Speaker 5: nine eleven high jackers were from, over eighty thousand men
Speaker 5: and boys were registered and more than thirteen thousand were
Speaker 5: put in the pipeline for deportation. Now, this endeavor ultimately failed.
Speaker 5: The program didn't result in a single terrorism related conviction,
Speaker 5: not one. En SEARS was suspended in twenty eleven and
Speaker 5: ended in twenty sixteen under the Obama administration.
Speaker 2: Obama's move comes only one day after Donald Trump appeared
Speaker 2: to reiterate his pledge to reinstate this very registry when
Speaker 2: answering a question from a For the.
Speaker 5: Past twenty years, immigration and terrorism have been handled within
Speaker 5: the same federal organization. Not even a month after nine
Speaker 5: to eleven, the Bush administration created the Office of Homeland Security.
Speaker 5: It became a cabinet level department a year later with
Speaker 5: the passage of the Homeland Security Act.
Speaker 11: The Homeland Security Act of two thousand and two takes
Speaker 11: the next critical steps in defending our country continuing threat
Speaker 11: of terrorism. The threat of mass murder on our own
Speaker 11: soil will be met with a unified, effective response. Dozens
Speaker 11: of agencies charged with homeland security will now be located within.
Speaker 5: One DHS is huge, with twenty two agencies under its purview,
Speaker 5: and its responsibilities are vast. DHS is in charge of
Speaker 5: national cybersecurity, the Coastguard, the Secret Service, and the Countering
Speaker 5: Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, just to name a few.
Speaker 5: But this is also the same department that processes and
Speaker 5: police's new immigrants to the United States. Immigration and Customs
Speaker 5: Enforcement aka ICE didn't exist until two thousand and two.
Speaker 5: It's also a part of DHS. The agency's responsibilities include
Speaker 5: enforcing border security, regulating immigration, and removing quote criminal non
Speaker 5: city from the United States. In the name of national security.
Speaker 5: Immigrants would be formally recorded, fetted, tracked, detained, held in
Speaker 5: legal limbo for decades, and subject to brutality and mistreatment
Speaker 5: at the hands of enforcement officers. This isn't to say
Speaker 5: that immigration enforcement wasn't happening before nine to eleven, but
Speaker 5: with all these new security policies and agencies, immigrants became
Speaker 5: obvious mainstream targets.
Speaker 14: ICE will attack thousands of families, separating children from parents.
Speaker 13: Passionate protesters today in Chicago joined those in cities around
Speaker 13: the nation.
Speaker 5: ICE has only become more powerful over the years, with
Speaker 5: record level detainments and deportations over the past decade under
Speaker 5: the Obama and Trump administrations.
Speaker 15: You know, let's just remember that the largest deportation happened
Speaker 15: under President Obama. There are many critics called them the
Speaker 15: deporter in Chief, and that was something like four hundred thousand.
Speaker 15: So when you're talking about millions here, it is unprecedented.
Speaker 16: Several loud and angry protests were held across the country
Speaker 16: today of a President Trump's decision to start immigration raids tomorrow.
Speaker 5: And the entire reason for its existence is based on
Speaker 5: a single idea that immigrants pose an ongoing threat to
Speaker 5: this country, an idea that was crystallized after nine to
Speaker 5: eleven and that we're still grappling with to this day.
Speaker 1: Coming up on Latino USA, more on the repercussions of
Speaker 1: the nine to eleven attacks on immigrant communities, and we
Speaker 1: learn about real ID, a seemingly innocuous federal legislation that
Speaker 1: risks pushing hundreds of thousands of undocumented drivers into a
Speaker 1: colliding path with ICE. Stay with US. Yes, hey, we're back.
Speaker 1: Before the break, we heard about the creation of the
Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security, but that was just the beginning.
Speaker 1: The police which followed, under the guise of securing the nation,
Speaker 1: would infiltrate numerous aspects of local and federal governance, including
Speaker 1: states departments of motor vehicles. But at the other end
Speaker 1: of the new quote unquote anti terrorism policies, the people
Speaker 1: most affected would once again be immigrant families. So how
Speaker 1: did September eleventh pave the way for something known as
Speaker 1: the Real id? Latino USA producer Julieta Martinelli is going
Speaker 1: to pick up the story from here.
Speaker 14: In August two thousand and eight, Sulema, my mom received
Speaker 14: a letter in the mail. I was living a few
Speaker 14: blocks away at the time, and she called me immediately.
Speaker 12: My friend Chui had got a letter before me, so
Speaker 12: I knew that it might happen.
Speaker 5: To me too.
Speaker 14: The letter came from the Department of Drivers Services in Georgia,
Speaker 14: where we had lived since nineteen ninety seven, when my mom,
Speaker 14: my older brother, and I immigrated from Argentina. We knew
Speaker 14: immediately it was bad news. The letter said that her
Speaker 14: license was about to expire. Georgia at the time granted
Speaker 14: driver's licenses for ten years. My mom had gotten hers
Speaker 14: in ninety eight when she still had a tourist visa.
Speaker 14: Just months after arriving. The letter said in order to
Speaker 14: renew it she would need to go to the DMB
Speaker 14: and provide documents proving that she was living legally in
Speaker 14: the US.
Speaker 12: It was like the end of the world because I
Speaker 12: knew that there was no way I could provide that number.
Speaker 14: The problem was, for nearly eleven years we've lived in
Speaker 14: the US undocumented.
Speaker 12: You feel like the will is opening on your feet
Speaker 12: because you know sheen there on since we are going
Speaker 12: to be different, and it felt really very bad now.
Speaker 14: Being undocumented affected our daily lives in endless ways. We
Speaker 14: couldn't travel, we hadn't seen our family in years, and
Speaker 14: just a couple of years earlier, my mom had gotten
Speaker 14: laid off. I couldn't even go to college at the time,
Speaker 14: but I had managed to get hired as an intern
Speaker 14: at a Spanish language newspaper, and there I had been
Speaker 14: trained to be a reporter. I was actually working two
Speaker 14: jobs at the newspaper during the day, and when I
Speaker 14: got off, I would work until four am as a
Speaker 14: shift manager. At a nearby taco bill. Working with questionable
Speaker 14: paperwork meant you had to take what was available. Often
Speaker 14: your bosses knew that too, and your wages reflected that.
Speaker 14: But my mom being able to drive in suburban Georgia
Speaker 14: was huge and necessary. There was just one train line
Speaker 14: to Atlanta, which required a twenty minute drive to the
Speaker 14: station from our house, and the spotty at best public
Speaker 14: bus system. A driver license meant that she could drive
Speaker 14: to clean houses daily, that she wouldn't need to work
Speaker 14: for someone else, that she could go and get groceries
Speaker 14: to the park on the weekends. Think of how often
Speaker 14: you show your ID and your daily life to travel,
Speaker 14: to walk into a bar, even to buy cough syrup
Speaker 14: at the pharmacy. But more importantly, it meant she could
Speaker 14: register her car, she could get insurance. She was a
Speaker 14: lifeline for our family.
Speaker 12: It was a risk that we had to run. There
Speaker 12: was no other way. If it was like put your
Speaker 12: life in a permanent stop if you couldn't drive. We
Speaker 12: decided to go on because we came to this country
Speaker 12: to work to improve.
Speaker 14: Like my mom, non citizen drivers all over the state
Speaker 14: with licenses set to expire that year received similar letters
Speaker 14: in two thousand and three, Georgia had started to verify
Speaker 14: the legal status of all applicants by requiring immigration paperwork
Speaker 14: and running it through various data. That's why my brother
Speaker 14: and I had never been able to apply for a license.
Speaker 14: We were just too young before the cutoff. But my
Speaker 14: mom was one of the last holdouts, people who had
Speaker 14: received their driver's licenses before the state's more stringent policies.
Speaker 14: Plus Georgia was streamlining. On January first, two thousand and eight,
Speaker 14: the Georgia Department of Driver's Services officially began using a
Speaker 14: program called Safe. It was used to confirm people's identities
Speaker 14: and lawful presence in the country in order to grant
Speaker 14: driver's licenses. Save was a program created by USCIS. That's
Speaker 14: the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that administers
Speaker 14: the country's naturalization and immigration system. It too, lives under
Speaker 14: the purview of the overreaching Department of Homeland Security. That
Speaker 14: was supposed to make things faster and more accurate instead
Speaker 14: of running names and socials through several databases. This was
Speaker 14: the future all in one. Around the same time, the
Speaker 14: Georgia legislature began considering a bill to make driving while
Speaker 14: unlicensed a felony. A felony, any felony would later need
Speaker 14: to be disclosed to USCIS if an opportunity ever arose
Speaker 14: to legalize status.
Speaker 12: It was scary, It was really scary, and we were
Speaker 12: running like playing hide and seek. That was it with
Speaker 12: the police, with the immigration things. It was very hard time.
Speaker 14: By the end of two thousand and eight, my mom
Speaker 14: was on her first of many years driving unlicensed, and
Speaker 14: so was I but neither of us realized just how
Speaker 14: tired what was happening in our present was to an
Speaker 14: event that had shaken the whole nation nearly a decade earlier.
Speaker 14: This wasn't just Georgia being Georgia. It was happening across
Speaker 14: the nation. But how was life before ninety eleven changed
Speaker 14: it completely? Things weren't all that better. There were thousands
Speaker 14: of undocumented people like me and my family who were
Speaker 14: living in states that did not grant driver's licenses. Some
Speaker 14: of them traveled to states like Washington, North Carolina, or Tennessee,
Speaker 14: where proof of legal status was not necessary. There you
Speaker 14: could get a driver's license and register your vehicle so
Speaker 14: you had a valid tag. In other states, undocumented people
Speaker 14: had been able to access driver's licenses using other documents,
Speaker 14: sometimes borrowing a friend's address. In other places, like Virginia,
Speaker 14: the state allowed waivers that identified residant drivers as non
Speaker 14: citizens but still allow them to legally drive. The American
Speaker 14: Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, which represents the state agencies
Speaker 14: that issue licenses, had even begun urging Congress to issue
Speaker 14: uniform rules regarding the granting of licenses to undocumented people
Speaker 14: instead of leaving it to each state, and there were
Speaker 14: a lot of good reasons to do it.
Speaker 9: More than ten other states already allow it, and advocates
Speaker 9: say it would make the road safer and raise millions
Speaker 9: of dollars in revenue.
Speaker 17: It would be good for the state, good for the
Speaker 17: undocumented individuals who could get the licenses, good for safety,
Speaker 17: good for revenue, which is in a way those leaves.
Speaker 14: And some states were making progress. In the summer of
Speaker 14: two thousand and one, The New York Times reported that
Speaker 14: the Hispanic liaison to the New York County government had
Speaker 14: asked the DMB to accept the individual Taxpayer Identification Number,
Speaker 14: which is issued by the IRS on applications for licenses.
Speaker 14: While undocumented people in places like New York City were
Speaker 14: close to finally being able to get legal IDs and
Speaker 14: driver's licenses. September eleven ended those conversations completely. Immediately after
Speaker 14: the terrorist attacks, as information trickled out slowly, the twenty
Speaker 14: four hour news cycle was dominated by stories of the
Speaker 14: terrorists who had been able to do what they did
Speaker 14: because they had been able to obtain legal identifications.
Speaker 7: This terrorist attack did fly to Boston from Portland, Maine,
Speaker 7: and interestingly enough, they used New Jersey driver's license as identification.
Speaker 14: Sixteen of the nineteen terrorists held ballid driver's licenses or
Speaker 14: identification cars from states including Virginia and Florida. These documents
Speaker 14: had enabled them to board planes, open bank accounts, and
Speaker 14: rent apartments. The federal government was under mounting pressure to
Speaker 14: publicly address this quote vulnerability in the system.
Speaker 16: The nine to eleven Commission noted all but one of
Speaker 16: the nine to eleven Commission hijackers acquired some form of
Speaker 16: US identification document, some by fraud. Acquisition of these forms
Speaker 16: of identification would have assisted them in boarding commercial flights,
Speaker 16: renting cars, and other necessary activities.
Speaker 4: That's the commission report.
Speaker 14: In the following two years, nearly every state with potential
Speaker 14: gaps took measures to toughen its roles. A traumatized nation
Speaker 14: needed some semblance of security of control, and this was
Speaker 14: one of the things the government could actually tell citizens
Speaker 14: that they were trying to reign in. Initially, politicians began
Speaker 14: calling out for a national database so that policies mirrored
Speaker 14: each other's state to state, but issuing of identification cards
Speaker 14: false under state legislation, so the federal government could not
Speaker 14: take over and force an uniform set of guidelines. That Congress,
Speaker 14: the real ID Act of two thousand and five, was
Speaker 14: passed with bipartisan support. It found a way to force
Speaker 14: states to update their laws by mandating that DMBs require
Speaker 14: a proof of citizenship to grant real ID driver's licenses
Speaker 14: and ID cards, among other measures, Applicants would have to
Speaker 14: prove their legal status by showing documents like a US passport,
Speaker 14: a Social Security card, or even a Green card. This
Speaker 14: was a huge blow to undocumented people because it meant
Speaker 14: the federal government had succeeded in forcing the hand of
Speaker 14: states that had at least been friendly, and was empowering
Speaker 14: the states that hadn't, like Georgia, to restrict access even further.
Speaker 17: This is talk of the nation. I'm neil Conan in Washington.
Speaker 17: Members of Congress have also taken up the issue. In February,
Speaker 17: a provision known as real ID passed in the House
Speaker 17: of Representatives. It would impose federal standards on driver's licenses
Speaker 17: and also make it harder for emigrats to seek asylum.
Speaker 14: Real ideas are simply identifications that have passed a quote
Speaker 14: higher level of security. People's data has been checked against
Speaker 14: a number of federal databases to house information about the applicants.
Speaker 14: The legislation made it so that the real ideas would
Speaker 14: eventually become mandatory for people who want to access federal facilities,
Speaker 14: board federally regulated airplanes, and enter nuclear power plants. Any
Speaker 14: state that did not comply with the minimum regulations could
Speaker 14: still provide drivers' licenses to their residents, but by a
Speaker 14: set period of time when the law would go into effect,
Speaker 14: those citizens would be blocked from accessing these federal really
Speaker 14: controlled areas. Of course, the one most people cared about
Speaker 14: was the ability to fly. I mean, imagine you show
Speaker 14: up at the airport to spend Christmas with your family,
Speaker 14: or maybe to attend the friend's wedding in another state,
Speaker 14: and a tsagent tells you, oh, well, your driver's license
Speaker 14: is from New York, so you're not allowed to fly.
Speaker 14: This was really what forced all fifty states to start
Speaker 14: complying with real Idea legislation. But it was hard and expensive.
Speaker 14: Although there was a lot of pushback from states who
Speaker 14: did not want the federal government to shape their laws,
Speaker 14: changes were eminent, and back home, something else was happening.
Speaker 14: At the same time.
Speaker 12: There were tons of police cars, like thirty or forty
Speaker 12: police cars in a very in the street, and then
Speaker 12: big bus is picking up people from their cars and
Speaker 12: taking them into the bus to take them to the prism.
Speaker 12: And that was just because it didn't have a drivers license.
Speaker 14: In two thousand and nine, the year after my mom
Speaker 14: began driving un licensed, there was a new boogeyman. It
Speaker 14: was no longer just about dodging police cruisers that hit
Speaker 14: behind bushes or staked out drivers at the bottom of hills.
Speaker 14: It was the beginning of the roadblocks.
Speaker 2: Remember the roadblocks?
Speaker 12: Yeah, all the time, all the time. That was crazy.
Speaker 12: That time was so difficult. But the good thing that
Speaker 12: I remember is that our people got organized. They we
Speaker 12: text each other and we knew that there was a
Speaker 12: roadblock over that area. So I called to my husband
Speaker 12: and say, hey, don't go to that street because there
Speaker 12: is a road block.
Speaker 14: Two eighty seven G it was a new program, a
Speaker 14: collaboration between local police department and ICE. Anyone who was
Speaker 14: arrested and booked into a local jail that participated in
Speaker 14: the program would have their legal status checked immediately. If
Speaker 14: they were undocumented, they would be referred to ICE, and
Speaker 14: if ICE confirmed they were not here legally, they could
Speaker 14: be put into deportation proceedings. In Winnett County, where I
Speaker 14: grew up, the local sheriff joined to eighty seven G.
Speaker 14: It effectively granted his deputies the power of ICE agents.
Speaker 14: The county jail could detain immigrants on federal retainers.
Speaker 18: A message that's being sent loud and clear in Gwinnette County.
Speaker 18: If you are in the country illegally and you commit
Speaker 18: a crime, you could be deported. The program called two
Speaker 18: eighty seven G was just approved and it has people
Speaker 18: on both sides of the immigration debate sounding off.
Speaker 14: So close was that partnership that the Winnette County Detention
Speaker 14: Center allowed ICE agents to install an office in there.
Speaker 14: That meant every second counted when a loved one was arrested.
Speaker 5: Everyone mobilized.
Speaker 14: You had to get the money immediately, have someone with
Speaker 14: a legal idea on call who could show up at
Speaker 14: the jail and bond the person out as quickly as possible.
Speaker 14: If you took too long, maybe because you didn't have
Speaker 14: thousands of dollars disposal, it could be too late. A
Speaker 14: traffic infraction like driving on unexpired license could and often.
Speaker 2: Did get undocumented.
Speaker 14: People reported in fact well ICE holds and when I
Speaker 14: peaked in twenty twelve, a Mother Jones investigation found that
Speaker 14: still between twenty seventeen and July twenty nineteen, the primary
Speaker 14: charge for nearly half of the people held for ICE
Speaker 14: at the Winnett County Jail was for driving without a
Speaker 14: license or another minor traffic violation.
Speaker 12: So it's much scary because we feel that it was
Speaker 12: never ending, never ending. It was any time close to
Speaker 12: where you were going to sleep, and then you received
Speaker 12: the message saying there is a blockage in such or
Speaker 12: that street, and I remember we just went to work,
Speaker 12: and we didn't go to the store unless you really
Speaker 12: need it, because the most what you wanted to get
Speaker 12: is just get hold, get home.
Speaker 14: It was so prevalent that eventually everyone in my household
Speaker 14: had been bought at Winna County Jail at least once.
Speaker 14: I remember the first time you ever got pulled over,
Speaker 14: and I remember I cried.
Speaker 12: No, no, that was awful. That was an awful day.
Speaker 12: That day was a morning that I went. I used
Speaker 12: to go to one client that I cleaned her house,
Speaker 12: but she was always asking me to iron for her.
Speaker 12: And I remember I was passing next to the lake
Speaker 12: and I was looking at the lake, and I said,
Speaker 12: what such a beautiful morning. And when I looked, I
Speaker 12: saw police stopping me because I was really speeding. I
Speaker 12: didn't realize it was twenty five that area and I
Speaker 12: was thirty. They told me, well, I'm sorry, ma'am. Put
Speaker 12: your hands behind and I felt so bad at that moment.
Speaker 14: We were lucky though all of us were out in time,
Speaker 14: but not everyone in our community could say that.
Speaker 19: This month, human rights groups came together to urge Georgia
Speaker 19: counties to end the program.
Speaker 20: Two eighty seven G serves our deportation pipeline where thousands
Speaker 20: of immigrants and refugees are being deported, breaking families apart.
Speaker 19: And opponents of twoity seven GC the agreement causes mistrust
Speaker 19: between the community and local law enforcement.
Speaker 14: Real ID, which began as a way to tighten ID laws,
Speaker 14: once coupled with other policies, actually opened the path for
Speaker 14: increased immigration enforcement and deportations. In many places. It turned
Speaker 14: people into criminals. Moms, dads deals. Now they all had records,
Speaker 14: their names were in the system. They'd all been in
Speaker 14: a cell. Any brush with the government was dangerous. I
Speaker 14: mean that was the first thing I learned when we
Speaker 14: came to the US. LAYLO, don't call attention to yourself.
Speaker 14: But real ID pushed into the light many undocumented people
Speaker 14: who otherwise would have never had contact with police or DHS.
Speaker 14: It stopped people from applying for jobs, going to school,
Speaker 14: accessing needed resources, you name it. Something as innocuous as
Speaker 14: calling the police because you witnessed the crime became scary.
Speaker 14: Any contact with police could change your life. It made
Speaker 14: everyone unsafe. Nearly a decade after September eleven, the counseling
Speaker 14: of driver's licenses and the decision of local police departments
Speaker 14: across the country to participate in two eighty seven g
Speaker 14: cost a perfect storm, and communities like mine, people who
Speaker 14: lost their ability to work were at the same time
Speaker 14: faced with a number of growing raids and roadblocks. Often
Speaker 14: on the way home from work, we would get phone calls.
Speaker 14: Police said it was all about public safety, but everyone
Speaker 14: knew they were out looking for us. It became like
Speaker 14: a game of chicken with really high stakes. That anxiety,
Speaker 14: in many ways became a base. It's just how things were.
Speaker 14: The fear never really goes away, It just dolls. See,
Speaker 14: you get choosed to the situation.
Speaker 12: You feel that everything is in ormal and until something
Speaker 12: bad happens, and then is when it comes the end
Speaker 12: of the world for the family.
Speaker 14: My older brother, after a number of arrests, unexhausted from
Speaker 14: the constant risk, decided to go back to Argentina in
Speaker 14: twenty fourteen. My mom, who had experienced the pain of
Speaker 14: being away from her parents for over a decade, now
Speaker 14: had to learn to be away from her son and
Speaker 14: her only grandkids. My brother couldn't return to the US,
Speaker 14: my mom couldn't go to Argentina. It was yet another
Speaker 14: separation in our family. If nine to eleven was an
Speaker 14: atomic bomb that caused so much pain and destruction on impact,
Speaker 14: what came after was the radiation that infested but couldn't
Speaker 14: be seen, the deadly repercussions that hit, the unseen, the law,
Speaker 14: the persecution, the laws. There was no way to know
Speaker 14: when it would end, if it would end. Each day
Speaker 14: the waves kept coming, and most of us just try
Speaker 14: to stay afloat when it has two claims to fame.
Speaker 14: I always tell people that when they ask me where
Speaker 14: I'm from, it's where the migos are from. And for
Speaker 14: years it was the county with the most two eighty
Speaker 14: seven g iceholds in the nation. It's been sixteen years
Speaker 14: and the national implementation of real ID has repeatedly been delayed,
Speaker 14: the last time in twenty twenty due to the COVID
Speaker 14: nineteen pandemic, but it is said to finally go into
Speaker 14: effect in twenty twenty three. If you've flown recently, you've
Speaker 14: seen the signs. They're everywhere at the airport. At the
Speaker 14: same time, more states than ever now allow undocumented residents
Speaker 14: to apply for driver's licenses. The number is now sixteen
Speaker 14: That includes California, New York, Colorado, and most recently Virginia.
Speaker 14: These states have found a way to comply with real
Speaker 14: ID by granting documents that cannot be used for federal
Speaker 14: ID purposes, meaning once real ID finally goes into effect,
Speaker 14: undocumented people will not be able to use their identification
Speaker 14: to do things like travel by plane, but they will
Speaker 14: still be able to drive safely in their state. Whether
Speaker 14: these changes this legislation, this persecution was ever needed, Whether
Speaker 14: it aided safety is up for debate. Two decades later,
Speaker 14: states are still learning that it's better for public safety
Speaker 14: to allow undocumented people to drive legally. In other places,
Speaker 14: things move a little slower.
Speaker 21: Hundreds of people from all walks of life, including young children,
Speaker 21: came out to downtown Atlanta to protest and denounce what
Speaker 21: they're calling were raids on the immigrant community over the
Speaker 21: last few weeks.
Speaker 14: Georgia still does not grant licenses to people without legal status.
Speaker 14: Driving without a permit in the state can land you
Speaker 14: in jail for up to a year. In twenty twenty,
Speaker 14: Sheriff Butch Conway decided not to run for re election
Speaker 14: after nearly two decades at the helm of the Winnett
Speaker 14: County Sheriff's office. Sheriff Conway's protege was defeated by an
Speaker 14: opponent who ran on an anti two to eighty seven
Speaker 14: g platform. That same year, Whenett ranked fourth in the
Speaker 14: entire country for the number of ice detainer requests. On
Speaker 14: January first, twenty twenty one, newly elected Sheriff Cable Taylor
Speaker 14: ended when it's two to eighty seven g contract with
Speaker 14: ICE after more than a decade. Back in my home,
Speaker 14: we don't worry about that little plastic rectangle a driver's
Speaker 14: license that so affected our life at one point, at
Speaker 14: least not as much anymore. In twenty seventeen, I became
Speaker 14: a US citizen, and the following year I was able
Speaker 14: to petition for my mom. We drive in peace now,
Speaker 14: but the repercussions in our family are permanent. My brother's gone,
Speaker 14: my stepfather is at risk. At any time, the phone
Speaker 14: could ring and we'll need to be ready to rush
Speaker 14: to the local jail to help a relative or a friend.
Speaker 14: People can and are still persecuted for their legal status,
Speaker 14: and often it still starts with a driver's license.
Speaker 12: But I think that that make us more humans, is
Speaker 12: like you become more empathetic to the situations of the
Speaker 12: people around you. If you see a neighbor or a
Speaker 12: friend that you know doesn't have a driver's license, you
Speaker 12: always tell them call me if you need a drive.
Speaker 12: Because now I am on the other side, and I
Speaker 12: remember when you first started. I remember you also running
Speaker 12: behind your friends because some with your friends went to prison,
Speaker 12: and and there you went to take them out, and
Speaker 12: the same thing happened to us.
Speaker 14: That's what happens in our community. The system that could
Speaker 14: append the lives of our loved ones never rest, and
Speaker 14: that means neither do the rest of us.
Speaker 1: Coming up on Latino USA, the immigration bill interrupted by
Speaker 1: September eleventh. Two decades later, thousands of undocumented immigrants and
Speaker 1: advocates continue to fight to keep it alive. That's after
Speaker 1: the break. Stay with us, Yes, hey, we're back. The
Speaker 1: attacks on September eleventh brought a promising immigration bill that
Speaker 1: was making its way through Congress to a total and
Speaker 1: sudden halt. Its failure to pass in two thousand and
Speaker 1: one would then define the next twenty years of immigration
Speaker 1: activism for many in the country. Our producer of Victoria
Speaker 1: Estrada is going to look at that story and takes
Speaker 1: it from here.
Speaker 22: In the summer of two thousand and one, Daniel Sueta
Speaker 22: had just graduated from high school. She wanted to go
Speaker 22: to college, but there was one problem. Dania was undocumented.
Speaker 2: My counselor had basically told me that if I didn't
Speaker 2: have a lot of money saved up that and I
Speaker 2: didn't have residency or citizenship or like an international student permit.
Speaker 2: My only option was to go to Mexico.
Speaker 22: When Dania was ten years old, she and her family
Speaker 22: entered the US with tourist visas, but stayed and made
Speaker 22: a life in Chicago. Dania had good grades in high
Speaker 22: school was captain of the swim team, but her academic
Speaker 22: and sports skills would be of little help and documented
Speaker 22: she not only didn't have access to most grants her
Speaker 22: scholarships to help pay for college, she was required to
Speaker 22: pay out of state prohibited rates.
Speaker 2: And so I actually ended up applying as an international
Speaker 2: student to as several colleges, which then did require me
Speaker 2: to travel abroad to go to Mexico, apply in the
Speaker 2: US Embassy as an international student, but her.
Speaker 22: Student visa was denied and Dania was suddenly trapped outside
Speaker 22: the United States. Her family started to organize to bring
Speaker 22: her back. They held rallies, friends wrote letters of support
Speaker 22: on her behalf, and they even reached out to Illinois
Speaker 22: Senator Dick Durbin. At the time, Durbin and Orrin Hatch,
Speaker 22: a fellow Republican from Utah were drafting a piece of
Speaker 22: legislation that could help other students in similar situations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was this idea that undocumented students who had
Speaker 2: graduated in the US didn't really have a path forward.
Speaker 22: The bill had a very narrow scope. It would grant
Speaker 22: legal residency to undocumented high school graduates who had entered
Speaker 22: the US as children. It just had a few requirements.
Speaker 22: Applicants needed to have been in the country for at
Speaker 22: least five years, have no criminal record that might make
Speaker 22: them inadmissible or deportable, and be a quote person of
Speaker 22: good moral character. The Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors,
Speaker 22: or DREAM Act, was considered to have wide bipartisan support,
Speaker 22: since the senators who spawned were both one of the
Speaker 22: most conservative and one of the most liberal in the Senate.
Speaker 22: Reports at the time said that there were anywhere from
Speaker 22: fifty thousand to seventy five thousand children graduating from high
Speaker 22: school every year with no legal status. That meant up
Speaker 22: to seventy five thousand students for whom higher education was
Speaker 22: virtually denied.
Speaker 2: That was the first time that I saw that statistic
Speaker 2: next to my name and sort of understood that there
Speaker 2: was a bigger problem than just me and my family
Speaker 2: who was scared right.
Speaker 22: More recent reports showed that the number of undocumented high
Speaker 22: school graduates today is closer to one hundred thousand a year.
Speaker 22: With the direct help of Senator Durbin, Dana was able
Speaker 22: to get a humanitarian visa and return to the States.
Speaker 22: Then the Senator's office asked her to be part of
Speaker 22: the campaign to support the one legislation that could completely
Speaker 22: change her life. By that point, Dania had come out
Speaker 22: publicly about her undocumented status, so she spoke about her
Speaker 22: personal story, but also part of.
Speaker 2: My speech was saying, like there must be something wrong
Speaker 2: if sixty thousand and undocumented students graduate every year and
Speaker 2: like don't have a chance to go to school. Like
Speaker 2: it wasn't about even me anymore. It was like if
Speaker 2: it's me and sixty thousand other people, like something else
Speaker 2: is going on that we're not resolving.
Speaker 22: So when they asked her to, Dania didn't hesitate to
Speaker 22: testify before the Senate a few weeks later.
Speaker 2: I think they saw it as a good example of
Speaker 2: you know, someone who like fit the narrative, you know,
Speaker 2: had good grades. As president of the swim team, had
Speaker 2: had to go to Mexico to figure out this out,
Speaker 2: and like was actually still trying to figure out where
Speaker 2: to go to school.
Speaker 22: Ter Sali, another undocumented high school graduate from Chicago who
Speaker 22: had originally inspired the Dream Act, was also set to testify.
Speaker 22: The hearing was scheduled for September twelfth, two thousand and one.
Speaker 22: Dania was supposed to fly to d See the day before.
Speaker 22: Spirits were high.
Speaker 2: On September eleventh. I remember I was supposed to be
Speaker 2: out o hair in like the early afternoon. I remember
Speaker 2: Cladisol from Senator Durbin's staff had checked in with me.
Speaker 2: She was the person that I was going to meet
Speaker 2: at the airport. And I woke up because my grandmother,
Speaker 2: who was at home with me, said that I had
Speaker 2: a call from Clarisol, And so she's the one who
Speaker 2: told me that she was at the airport at the
Speaker 2: moment and that there was something going on and that
Speaker 2: she actually didn't think that we were going to be
Speaker 2: able to travel to DC, and that most likely the
Speaker 2: congressional hearing was going to be postponed. And that's when
Speaker 2: I like literally like woke up and turned on the
Speaker 2: TV and started seeing the images of the first plane.
Speaker 4: It's a fifty two.
Speaker 7: Here in New York, we understand that there has been
Speaker 7: a plane crash on the southern tip of Manhattan.
Speaker 4: You're looking at the World Trade.
Speaker 2: I just stayed at home and watched the news. I,
Speaker 2: you know, like everyone, I didn't know what was happening.
Speaker 2: I remember like all the planes were grounded, and I
Speaker 2: remember paying attention to that because I still had a
Speaker 2: little bit of hope that I was going to travel
Speaker 2: to DC. So we were just waiting to see when
Speaker 2: the planes would be like unngrounded or like with that,
Speaker 2: when that would be lifted. So there was that sense
Speaker 2: of like postponement, that we're just like waiting for things
Speaker 2: to get back to normal.
Speaker 22: Daniel would later realize that, after all, the hearing wasn't
Speaker 22: going to happen that week or that year. Her flight
Speaker 22: was never rescheduled, nor her testimony in support of the
Speaker 22: Dream Act. Well, the Dream Act kept coming back in
Speaker 22: the next years. The country had forever changed, and so
Speaker 22: had the debate around the bill. When it was reintroduced
Speaker 22: in two thousand and three, it had new requirements. Applicants
Speaker 22: had to have entered the US before their sixteenth birthday.
Speaker 22: There was no vote on the bill that year either
Speaker 22: and in the next legislature it was changed again, this
Speaker 22: time to adjust the status of the potential beneficiaries from
Speaker 22: permanent residents to conditional permanent residents. The new version of
Speaker 22: the bill didn't make it to a vote on the floor.
Speaker 22: In two thousand and seven, the Dream Act was introduced
Speaker 22: yet again, this time with the added requirement that applicants
Speaker 22: needed to be under thirty years old. Finally, a vote
Speaker 22: was scheduled, but the Bush White House came out against
Speaker 22: the bill, saying that it created loopholes that would legalize
Speaker 22: undocumented immigrants convicted of multiple misdemeanors and even felonies. Instead,
Speaker 22: the Iministration argued that what was needed was comprehensive immigration
Speaker 22: reform that included strong border and interior enforcement. The bill
Speaker 22: failed by less than ten votes. Detractors said they were
Speaker 22: not going to consider any piece of legislation that quote
Speaker 22: rewarded immigrant lawbreakers. Still, the immigration movement was garnering national momentum.
Speaker 22: In two thousand and eight, when Barack Obama was running
Speaker 22: for president, he identified immigration reform as a priority.
Speaker 23: The American people need us to put an end to
Speaker 23: the petty partisanship that passes for politics. And walking, and
Speaker 23: they need us to enact comprehensive immigration reform once and
Speaker 23: for all.
Speaker 4: They need not. We can't wait twenty years for now
Speaker 4: to do it.
Speaker 23: We can't wait ten years for now to do it.
Speaker 23: We need to do it by the end of my
Speaker 23: first term as President of the United States of America.
Speaker 22: As we know, Obama made it to the White House,
Speaker 22: but no reforms followed.
Speaker 2: And I think that's when I started getting really disappointed
Speaker 2: and a little bit more jaded about the politics, because
Speaker 2: you know, sort of expected it under Bush and under
Speaker 2: a Republican, but not so much in there a Democrat.
Speaker 22: Dania says she developed something she calls Obama trauma.
Speaker 2: I remember just having a lot of hope that that
Speaker 2: was going to impact my parents, in particular in my
Speaker 2: own situation. Every time it was bad, like every time,
Speaker 2: I remember just watching him and him being like, yes,
Speaker 2: we need immigration reform, but first, you know, we need
Speaker 2: the enforcement, and but first we need to do this.
Speaker 2: And so I started getting really tired of it.
Speaker 22: With no immigration reform nor dreamac devailable, Dania had managed
Speaker 22: to enter the University of Illinois at Chicago only with
Speaker 22: a private scholarship for her first year and after that.
Speaker 2: We had talked to some of the counselors who had,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of told us how to click on
Speaker 2: the right boxes so that you know, I wasn't claiming
Speaker 2: that I was a citizen, but I also wouldn't be
Speaker 2: charged as an international student.
Speaker 22: She began working in a radio station and after graduating,
Speaker 22: mentoring students as well. She continued to organize in favor
Speaker 22: of immigrants, and in two thousand and nine something happened
Speaker 22: that would push her activism further.
Speaker 2: One of my students had gotten pulled over by mobile
Speaker 2: Chicago police. They had turned them over to immigration enforcement
Speaker 2: and was actually in deportation proceedings and showed me that
Speaker 2: he was wearing an ankle monitor.
Speaker 22: The student was Rigo Padilla. In a matter of weeks,
Speaker 22: Dania Rigo and Ray Wenzis, another emerging activist, founded the
Speaker 22: Immigrant Youth Justice League to fight Rigo's deportation. On March
Speaker 22: tenth of twenty ten, they organized the first coming out
Speaker 22: rally for undocumented immigrants in Chicago. It was part of
Speaker 22: a much larger movement that was spreading quickly. In January,
Speaker 22: four students that started the Trail of Dreams March a
Speaker 22: fifteen hundred mile four month walk to support the Dream Act.
Speaker 24: We started back in Miami, were going off the way
Speaker 24: to Washington, DC to demand for President Obama to stop
Speaker 24: the separation of families and stop the deportation of a
Speaker 24: young students.
Speaker 22: And on May seventeenths.
Speaker 18: Ago protesters throwing things up in downtown Tisson at this hour,
Speaker 18: this is a live picture just outside Senator John McCain's office.
Speaker 22: Dania and four other undocumented youths held a sit in
Speaker 22: at the Tucson offices. It's Senator John McCain urging him
Speaker 22: to support the Dream Act.
Speaker 6: I saw this photo going around where five one documented
Speaker 6: students had done a sit in at McCain's office.
Speaker 22: This is Julio Salgado.
Speaker 4: I am an artist.
Speaker 6: I'm an artist who happens to be undocumented and queer.
Speaker 22: He was shocked when he saw what Dania and the
Speaker 22: others were daring to do.
Speaker 6: And I was like, oh my god, what are they doing.
Speaker 6: They're going to get arrested, They're going to get deported.
Speaker 22: A few years earlier, Juliam who's from California, had his
Speaker 22: own start and advocacy, creating a support room for undocumented
Speaker 22: students in college.
Speaker 6: I remember the you know, when they have like a
Speaker 6: welcoming week for students, and we set up our table
Speaker 6: and we were very strategic and being like, okay, we
Speaker 6: should put that we are a group for AB five
Speaker 6: forty students, and other AB five forty students will know
Speaker 6: what that means, right.
Speaker 22: AB five forty was a state law that went into
Speaker 22: effect about a month after nine to eleven and let
Speaker 22: undocumented students pay in state tuition at California's public colleges
Speaker 22: and universities. It was a progressive policy that allowed Julio
Speaker 22: and many others to continue their education. Only students in
Speaker 22: nine other states with similar laws had the privilege at
Speaker 22: the time.
Speaker 4: But it was super secretive.
Speaker 6: It wasn't there was no undocumented, unafraid, none of that.
Speaker 6: It was like, you know, at that time, I was
Speaker 6: I'm from a generation of undocumented and very.
Speaker 22: Afraid Matanias and others. Activism embold in him.
Speaker 6: I was like, all right, well, I'm not an organizer,
Speaker 6: you know, I don't do that, but I'm like, what
Speaker 6: can I do to add to this movement?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 4: And so you know, like I started making images.
Speaker 22: One of the first images he produced was a figure
Speaker 22: with a graduating cap and gown being taken away by
Speaker 22: two police officers as she shouts I exist.
Speaker 6: For me, it was very important to document those specific
Speaker 6: interventions from undocumented immigrants because I felt that it was
Speaker 6: a historic moment, and I was like, we need to
Speaker 6: make sure that this gets documented and it gets documented
Speaker 6: by us.
Speaker 22: For so long they had lived trying to go unnoticed.
Speaker 22: But that was over. Other acts of civil disobedience followed.
Speaker 22: Undocumented activists held sit ins in Washington, DC and hunger
Speaker 22: strikes in Los Angeles. On the sumber eighteenth of twenty ten,
Speaker 22: the House of Representatives passed a new version of the
Speaker 22: Dream Act. This time, the bills requirement had extended to
Speaker 22: include also a medical examination and the background check. Just
Speaker 22: before the vote, Senator Lindsey Graham took to the floor
Speaker 22: to say to those who had come to his office
Speaker 22: to protest that they were wasting their time.
Speaker 1: We're not going to pass the Dream Act or any
Speaker 1: other legalization program until we secure our borders.
Speaker 22: Thirty six Republicans and five Democrats voted against the bill,
Speaker 22: with only fifty five votes in favor, it didn't have
Speaker 22: a filibuster proof majority. After coming so close and seeing
Speaker 22: it fell yet again, Dania felt depleted at this point.
Speaker 2: I feel like I was also kind of used to
Speaker 2: things like this happening, Like Yeah, there was definitely like
Speaker 2: a feeling of like, well, of course, like, of course
Speaker 2: it doesn't happen again.
Speaker 22: The thing was the argument Republicans had used against the
Speaker 22: Dream Act that no immigration bill could be passed until
Speaker 22: borders were secure had also been used by Democrats trying
Speaker 22: to push for immigration reform. In the summer of two
Speaker 22: thousand and nine, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer outlined the framework
Speaker 22: for immigration reform that included this principle.
Speaker 13: Any immigration solution must recognize that we must do as
Speaker 13: much as we can to gain control of our borders
Speaker 13: as soon as possible.
Speaker 22: Other points included a biometric based employment verification system and
Speaker 22: having all undocumented immigrants in the country register and submit
Speaker 22: to a quote rigorous process to earn their path to
Speaker 22: citizenship or else phase deportation. Although Schumer did vote in
Speaker 22: favor of the twenty ten Dream Act, the principles he
Speaker 22: laid out for immigration reform just a year before had
Speaker 22: the same basis as of those who objected to the bill,
Speaker 22: that immigrants were guilty and to prove it innocent. After
Speaker 22: that narrow loss, the bill would continue to go through
Speaker 22: different versions, winning and losing support as politics changed. One
Speaker 22: of its original sponsors in two thousand and one did
Speaker 22: not vote for the Dream Act in twenty ten, and
Speaker 22: Senator Lindsey Graham, who spoke against it in twenty ten,
Speaker 22: would later become a co sponsor of the Dream Act.
Speaker 6: At every single cycle of elections, we were becoming a
Speaker 6: political game piece, right Like, I have my dreamer here,
Speaker 6: who's going to share their story?
Speaker 4: And you start You're like, I don't believe you anymore.
Speaker 22: In the summer of twenty twelve, the last year of
Speaker 22: his first term and seeking reelection, President Obama made an announcement.
Speaker 8: This morning, Secretary of Napoloitano announced new actions my administration
Speaker 8: will take to mend our nation's immigration policy to make
Speaker 8: it more fair, more efficient, and more just, specifically for
Speaker 8: certain young people sometimes called dreamers.
Speaker 22: With no immigration reform, after four years in the White House,
Speaker 22: Obama used his executive power to create the Deferred Action
Speaker 22: for Childhood Arrivals or DACA. The policy allowed undocumented immigrants
Speaker 22: who had been brought to the US as children to
Speaker 22: request deferred action from deportation and get a work permit.
Speaker 22: They needed a record free of Belanese or serious misdemeanors,
Speaker 22: and they had to reapply to the program every two years.
Speaker 22: DACA didn't offer a path to citizenship. It just stopped deportation.
Speaker 22: It was never meant to be a long term fixed.
Speaker 6: It was a bittersweet moment for a lot of us.
Speaker 6: It wasn't the Dream Act. It didn't include our parents,
Speaker 6: and I remember not wanting to apply to DACA.
Speaker 22: It seemed like a defeat. But eventually he did apply
Speaker 22: and got into the program. He's still a part of it.
Speaker 22: When Donald Trump was elected, he tried to end the program,
Speaker 22: but was blocked by the courts. Nevertheless, just a few
Speaker 22: months ago, DACA was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge
Speaker 22: in Texas, and for now all new applications have been suspended.
Speaker 4: Just a constant, is it going to go away?
Speaker 6: Because I'm able now to legally work in this country.
Speaker 6: I am very lucky to have, you know, insurance through
Speaker 6: my job that could go away at any minute if
Speaker 6: this shenanigans continue, right, And so it's it's it's a
Speaker 6: constant like you should be thankful, but at the same time, Like,
Speaker 6: here's some a little stress for you, right.
Speaker 2: It's kind of ridiculous that we've been talking about passing
Speaker 2: something for twenty years at this point, and that that's
Speaker 2: the only thing that's been able to move forward, and
Speaker 2: that like, at the same time, it has been.
Speaker 6: So fickle, and that is frustrating for somebody who's been
Speaker 6: doing this for like almost twenty years. It's I'm like,
Speaker 6: I just met an image yesterday. I put an image
Speaker 6: out that that say the DACA Youth and in the
Speaker 6: bottom like ma'am, I'm thirty seven.
Speaker 23: You know, Like.
Speaker 22: This touched on something that Dania sees is a problem
Speaker 22: with the original push for the Dream Act.
Speaker 2: Because we wanted to make a point, like we were
Speaker 2: very disciplined, because we felt like we have to shape
Speaker 2: our stories in a way that fit this strategy of
Speaker 2: moving forward. The bill I think over the years has
Speaker 2: also become this ugly thing that in policy means that
Speaker 2: like people who don't fit that narrative, including our parents,
Speaker 2: get left out of any sort of negotiations or considerations.
Speaker 22: They needed to be that perfect immigrant, someone innocent who
Speaker 22: had been brought to the US as a child. Gaga
Speaker 22: Greats never made mistakes that ended up in criminal convictions,
Speaker 22: spoke English and wanted to go to college or the army.
Speaker 22: Dania and other activists began to question that narrative.
Speaker 2: That pains a realistic picture of anyone. I mean, I think, like,
Speaker 2: you know, first of all, there is the question of
Speaker 2: the criminal justice system. Over the last several years, in particular,
Speaker 2: there's been a huge like black Lead movement that has
Speaker 2: exposed all of the cracks in a very mass way
Speaker 2: of the criminal justice system and how it targets people
Speaker 2: of color. And I think, like, if we believe that's true,
Speaker 2: then by definition, whenever we exclude immigrants who have any
Speaker 2: sort of criminal record from bills like the Dream Act
Speaker 2: or from immigration reform, we're buying into the things that
Speaker 2: the criminal justice system says.
Speaker 22: That's why, in a way, the failing of the Dream
Speaker 22: Act didn't quite disappoint her.
Speaker 2: It also felt like a big release, like we didn't
Speaker 2: actually have to shape our entire strategy and in some ways,
Speaker 2: our entire identity around this particular bill. You know, every year,
Speaker 2: for example, we had like a little theme for what
Speaker 2: are coming out of the Shadows rally was going to be,
Speaker 2: so like the first year was like undocumented, unafraid. The
Speaker 2: second year was documented unafraid and unapologetic, and the third
Speaker 2: year was after the failure of the Dream Act, and
Speaker 2: the theme was I Define Myself. And it was because
Speaker 2: we were coming out of like just this very rigid
Speaker 2: messaging that was about our stories too, and about who
Speaker 2: got to tell their stories.
Speaker 1: In March of this year, the House of Representatives passed
Speaker 1: the American Dream and Promise Act of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: The bill has yet to be voted on by this Senate,
Speaker 1: and so here we are, twenty years later, frustrated, the
Speaker 1: issue of immigration, refugees, migrants, people moving completely unresolved. What
Speaker 1: September eleventh did was to create a narrative that now
Speaker 1: we've had to be fighting again for twenty years, that
Speaker 1: somehow immigrants and refugees are a problem, and now we
Speaker 1: have refugees from Afghanistan a direct result of September eleventh
Speaker 1: and the actions of the United States government. The people
Speaker 1: of the United States and the people of Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: all migrants deserve better than this being the lesson of
Speaker 1: September eleventh. This episode was produced.
Speaker 20: By Alejandra Salasad, Ulieta Martinelli and Victoria Strada with help
Speaker 20: from Rinaldo Leanos Junior, Maria Esquinka and Oscarde Leone. It
Speaker 20: was edited by Andrea Lopez Grusado and mixed by Elishiba
Speaker 20: Itu and jj Krubin. The Latino USA team includes Mata
Speaker 20: mar Thenis, Mike Sargent, Daisy Contreras, Patrisa Subran and Elizabeth
Speaker 20: Loenthal Torres. Our editorial director is Fernandes Santos. Our director
Speaker 20: of engineering is Stephanie Lebau. Our senior engineer is Julia Caruso.
Speaker 20: Our associate engineer is Gabrielle le Bias. Our marketing manager
Speaker 20: is Luis Luna. Our theme music was composed by Xania Rubinos.
Speaker 20: I'm your host and executive producer Marie Jojosa. Join us
Speaker 20: again on our next episode. In the meantime, I'll see
Speaker 20: you on all of our social media and remember not
Speaker 20: te bayes nunca joo.
Speaker 25: Latino USA is made possible in part by the Anni E.
Speaker 25: Casey Foundation creates a brighter future for the nation's children
Speaker 25: by strengthening families, building greater economic opportunity, and transforming communities.
Speaker 25: The Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines
Speaker 25: of social change, worldwide, and funding for Latino USA is
Speaker 25: Coverage of a culture of health is made possible, in
Speaker 25: part by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Speaker 6: Yesterday, the Vice President met with some undocumented folks and
Speaker 6: a couple of weeks ago, she just told people not
Speaker 6: to come here, Like what is the tea