Meet Carlos Aguilar. Hes a fan of spoken word poetry. He played soccer in high school.
And he was a young undocumented immigrant, or Dreamer, who obtained protections under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and is now pursuing his doctorate at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
The third detail comes up often at rallies and news conferences, usually as politicians introduce Aguilar to make the case for giving Dreamers a path to citizenship. How could the U.S. not offer green cards to someone like him, they often ask, how could the country turn away an Ivy League scholar?
He hates it.
My story is more than education. My story is more than going to Harvard, the 28-year-old Mexican native said at a recent news conference. My story is the reflection of my parents dreams and my parents sacrificios to be here.
While the Trump administration argues against letting Dreamers and their parents remain in the U.S., Aguilar and other DACA recipients grapple with how theyre being portrayed in their fight for permanent legal status. Immigration hardliners describe them as criminals and job stealers, while advocates and politicians paint a picture of Ivy League scholars and geniuses often ignoring Dreamers and undocumented parents who do not fit the stereotype but, Aguilar argues, deserve legal status as much as anyone else.
Its difficult because with every action that I make, I kind of reinforce those narratives, Aguilar told MassLive. Other than Harvard, Im no one. No one cares about me. They just know that I go to Harvard, and now they treat me well.
President Barack Obama announced DACA in the summer of 2012 after failed attempts at immigration reform and protests from immigrant activists. Under his executive order, the federal government offered work permits and protection from deportation to eligible immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and had no legal status.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants nationwide obtained those protections, re-applying to renew those benefits every two years.
AP
President Barack Obama, center, and Vice President Joe Biden, right, listen as Diana Calderon, a student who has benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, speaks at a reception in the White House Thursday, Oct. 15, 2015, for Hispanic Heritage Month.
From the beginning, the announcement stirred controversy. Republican lawmakers called the move a form of amnesty. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called the DACA announcement a classic Barack Obama move of choosing politics over leadership," CNN reported at the time.
Today, more than 661,000 people have DACA protections across the country, including 5,600 in Massachusetts.
To qualify, immigrants must have entered the U.S. before age 16, lived in the U.S. continuously since Jan. 1, 2007 and been born since June 15, 1981. Applicants must also pass a background check and submit their fingerprints. Applicants convicted of a felony, a significant misdemeanor or multiple misdemeanors were not eligible for DACA.
In 2012, Aguilar was about to graduate with a psychology degree from Schreiner University in Kerrville, Texas. He was working under the table as a busboy in Central Texas.
As Aguilar saw it, he couldnt not work. Looking back, he said, the U.S. for decades has criticized immigrants as job takers without addressing the companies that see them as cheap labor.
They want people to get legalized, but at the same time they dont want to provide legalization channels because the economic structure that we have rely on communities having a cheapened, disposable labor force," he said.
Thats how I paid for my masters," he added. "I saved up at least the first year, then I continued working three jobs during my masters.
Once he obtained DACA, Aguilar got on the payroll of the Mexican restaurant back in Kerrville, taking on more responsibility at the business. He started paying taxes. He pursued a masters in sociology at the University of Texas at San Antonio, while juggling a job at a law firm, a second job as a research assistant and a third at the restaurant.
Aguilars restaurant experience and public school background may not seem as impressive as fellow Dreamers who became startup founders and hotshot lawyers, but experts say it reflects the lives that the average DACA recipients and their families lead.
A Migration Policy Institute report from 2017 stated that about 382,400 DACA recipients, or 55% of that population, at the time were employed. About 62% who were not in the labor force were enrolled in school. And one out of three DACA recipients who were enrolled in school also worked, similar to the U.S. young adult populations rate.
The majority worked in food preparation, office and administrative support, construction trades and sales, while smaller numbers of Dreamers worked in the military, computer and mathematics fields, agriculture and law.
Not everyone is a Harvard scholar ... but they shouldnt be discounted because they are a really good example of this country in that theres a good cross-section of people from all types of industries and walks of life," said Mo Goldman, an immigration attorney who works with DACA recipients in Arizona.
Meanwhile, DACA recipients are facing scrutiny over their background as President Donald Trump characterizes them as hardened criminals. His comment, made in a series of tweets, came days after the Supreme Court heard arguments over whether his administration broke the law by ending DACA.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services released data earlier in November showing the arrest records of DACA recipients, listing a series of offenses such as assault, battery, rape and murder. Of the nearly 686,000 approved for DACA, 54,500 have had an arrest.
As DACA continues to be the subject of both public discourse and ongoing litigation, USCIS remains committed to ensuring transparency and that the American people are informed about those receiving DACA, USCIS Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli said in a statement. This agency is obligated to continue accepting DACA requests from illegal aliens as a direct result of the previous administrations decision to circumvent the laws as passed by Congress."
But more than half of those arrests involved a charge related to a nonviolent offense or a civil immigration violation. The agency did not separate the charges from convictions in its report.
Using data on arrests and apprehensions, again, are not convictions, Goldman said. We live in a country where youre not guilty until found so by a court of law, and so I dont think that we should put a whole lot of weight to these records.
READ MORE: Supreme Court takes up DACA, case that affects thousands in Massachusetts
Aguilar never dreamed of becoming a researcher at Harvard University. Growing up in Guanajuato, Mexico, he saw education as a way to escape poverty.
His mother and grandparents had a small plot of land where they harvested food. His mother sold clothing in flea markets to pay the bills.
In Mexico, we were poor, but I never knew it because my mom always worked really hard, he recalled.
His family reminded him to work hard in school, and he enjoyed learning about math and history. At least, that is, until he moved to the U.S.
Aguilar was 14 years old when he and his mother arrived in Kerrville, Texas, without immigration papers. He jumped right into a ninth-grade classroom without knowing the English language.
I would see what they were working on, and I knew it, he said. I just didnt know how to say it.
English language learners in Aguilars schools often traveled with a translator, but Aguilar didnt share many of the same classes with his peers. As he recalls, he learned English mostly on his own, often learning to standardized tests. He joined the soccer team, which he credits with motivating him to maintain good grades.
Aguilar and his mother found success in their own ways. His mother, who has since gotten married and obtained a green card, started working in school cafeterias in Central Texas. Students often tell her about their days and school officials often ask for her help at events.
Aguilar completed his masters degree in sociology at the UTSA, but he sought to study undocumented youth and the struggles they face. He applied and got into a fully funded doctorate program at Harvard.
For me, it was kind of like making sense of my own experiences because I struggled a lot, he said. I was reading research on undocumented communities and knowing that those theoretical frameworks were missing something.
DACA has faced renewed scrutiny under the Trump administration. Early in his presidency, Trump said he has great heart for Dreamers and wants to find a compassionate, but lawful solution with regard to their status. Nine months after Trump took office, then- Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the program was being repealed, punting to Congress to pass a fix for DACA holders.
As the efforts to phase out DACA come under judicial review, the Trump administration has stepped up its criticism of its recipients.
AP
In this Jan. 10, 2018, file photo, President Donald Trump listens during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington.
The USCIS report that came days later doesnt say how many of the 54,500 applicants who successfully obtained DACA and had an arrest listed were actually convicted or may have had charges dismissed or otherwise resolved.
There were 54 DACA recipients with more than 10 arrests whose cases were approved as of October 2019, according to the data. The data also includes arrests for civil immigration violations and traffic offenses, separate from operating under the influence.
According to the report, 12,968 were immigration-related offenses. More than 25,000 were traffic offenses that did not involve operating a vehicle under the influence.
When it came to the offenses USCIS highlighted, 3,308 of people who obtained DACA had a prior arrest for assault, 3,421 had a prior arrest for battery, 62 had an arrest for rape and 259 were arrested for sexual abuse and statutory rape. Fifteen had been arrested on a murder charge.
READ MORE: House Democrats offer immigration bill to protect dreamers, TPS recipients
Goldman said he felt that the data was portraying an incomplete picture of DACA recipients. Some have made mistakes, he said, just like Americans across the country.
It feels like this data is just being weaponized against them in a way that it shouldnt be used, unfortunately, because its misleading, Goldman said.
Miguel Montalva Barba, an assistant sociology professor at Salem State University, said two extreme narratives about immigrants play out with every generation of newcomers to the U.S.
Either youre the villain or youre the super amazing, came-from-nothing, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps [character]," he said.
A former DACA recipient, Barba said he knows from experience. Before Obama announced DACA, he was part of a group of activists pushing the Democrat to even consider such protections for young undocumented immigrants.
Barba said he and his cohorts grappled with similar questions about what message theyre sending about so-called Dreamers, and whos getting left out. For example, he said he promoted the stories of queer undocumented people even though he knew it would offend some religious leaders who typically supported undocumented immigrants, but not LGBTQ rights.
Even from that moment, in those first organizing sessions, we knew we had to break away from the 'good immigrant narrative, he recalled.
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Aguilar, the doctoral candidate, dove into his doctoral studies in hopes of exploring underreported research on DACA. A report he contributed to, released earlier this month, suggests that DACA enabled recipients to obtain better-paying jobs and higher education, but that they could only help their family so much if they were the only one with legal status.
The report also states that DACA recipients have struggled with their mental health as they stress over their immigration status and the fate of their undocumented parents.
Yet outside of his research, Aguilar said, he often sees the immigration debates devolve to either superficial stereotypes about immigrants, both negative and positive.
When one national organization asked for information about him, Aguilar submitted details about how DACA helped him go from a busboy to a cashier at the Mexican restaurant where he once worked. He left out Harvard University entirely.
After that, they didnt contact me anymore, he said. I kind of knew that was a risk, but it was a risk I was willing to take.
When asked about his success story, Aguilar changes the subject from Harvard. Instead, he talks about the success of his mom, his peers and other recipients hes met along the way.
Most are going to community colleges, vocational training. Most have, relatively speaking, very happy lives with DACA. They were able to have great families because they have some sort of stability, he said. They were able to take a better-paying job than a busboy, all these gains that we dont think of as important, these are important for our communities."
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