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A text message from a friend popped on Devani Gonzlezs phone when Joe Biden was named president-elect on the Saturday after Election Day. How do you feel?

The days that passed between the last ballots cast and the announcement of Bidens win were grueling. But so were the last four years. She took a moment before writing back. I dont know. I just feel like, relief. I feel very emotional. I feel hope.

For many like Gonzlez, a 24-year-old Houston paralegal, the election ousting President Donald Trump meant the end of years of worry, threats of deportation and being the target of abuse. A core base of Trumps supporters stood by his immigration policies, which brought increased enforcement, and his vitriol, which made life more difficult for both immigrants and people in the country illegally. He also tightened legal channels into the country and made immigration processes more arduous and expensive for foreign-born people.

Weve been attacked over and over and over and over again, said Gonzlez, who now hopes to achieve a permanent legal status under a Biden presidency.

Gonzlez is among the so-called Dreamers, those brought into the country illegally when they were children, their hopes threatened under the Trump Administration.

Our hope is that even if we dont have somebody to help us 100%, at least we wont have somebody thatll continue to hurt us 100%, said Csar Espinosa, leader of FIEL Houston, one of the largest immigrant advocacy organizations in the city.

The election drew a record number of ballots, including more than 73 million people who voted for Trump, many of whom supported his focus on immigration. In national surveys, most Trump supporters say they view illegal immigration as a significant problem. They support in high numbers stronger law enforcement and tougher border security.

Todd Bensman, a Texas-based Senior National Security Fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies, said Trump was justifiably targeting programs that should not be protecting immigrants in the country illegally from deportatation.

Allowing them to continue, Bensman said, serves as another fantastic incentive for mass migration.

One of the programs is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that protects dreamers from deportation and provides work permits. Conservatives have long challenged the constitutional legality of DACA, created under executive order by former President Barack Obama.

Trump tried to eliminate the program, but the U.S. Supreme Court rejected that effort. Nonetheless, he closed the door to new applicants around 500,000 newly eligible young immigrants and imposed new restrictions. Beneficiaries are now forced to apply for renewal every year instead of every two.

The U.S. is home to about 644,000 DACA recipients, with about 106,000 in Texas, according to March statistics with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the most recent available. The Houston metro area has 32,450 dreamers.

If there had been another Trump term, Gonzlez said, she believes the program would again be in jeopardy.

Us dreamers, we have been waiting for a very long time for a permanent solution to our situation, said Gonzlez, who has been a DACA holder for eight years. It gets very frustrating, very emotionally draining to be pinning your life on a two-year basis, let alone one.

Recipients of Temporary Protected Status, a program created under President George H.W. Bush, are also hopeful for the next four years. The Department of Homeland Security terminated this humanitarian program for almost all of its beneficiaries. Like DACA, TPS provides work permits to people who cannot return to designated countries where violent conflicts, natural disasters or extraordinary conditions exist.

Were getting tons of calls from people who feel relieved, seeing the light with Biden victory, said Iris Canizales, TPS community organizer with the Central American Resource Center in Houston. She explained that callers are hopeful that Biden will restore their status, which for many expires in January.

The majority of around 300,000 TPS holders nationwide are from El Salvador and Honduras, and roughly 17,000 and 6,000 live in Houston, respectively. The rest of the impacted are from Haiti, Nicaragua, Nepal and Sudan.

To Bensman, TPS was a door that needed to be closed. Youll have an earthquake 20 years ago, and all the Salvadorans are still here taking shelter from that earthquake, he countered. Where do you draw the lines?

While seeking to end those programs, Trump began new, controversial measures including the systematic separation of children from their parents at the border. Although it ended, about 600 kids, some under the age of 5, continue to be under the supervision of federal as authorities cannot find their parents.

The so-called Remain in Mexico program restricts requirements for asylum seekers in the U.S. and forces non-Mexican applicants to stay in that country to wait for their hearings. Trump has also banned visas for a dozen mostly Muslim-majority countries from Africa and Asia and increased deportations of non-criminal immigrants in the country illegally, many of whom parents of American children.

Sarah Pierce, a U.S. immigration policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank in New York that tracks international migrations, said President Trump is the first modern president to view both illegal and legal immigration as a net negative for the United States.

Her agency has been cataloguing more than 400 policy changes introduced by Trump, many by executive orders, that significantly reshaped the system, including legal migration.

Bidens immigration plan promises to roll back most of Trumps policies during his first 100 days in office. After that, advocates, like Espinosa, as well as policy experts recognize that any significant policy change including finding permanent solutions for DACA and TPS holders will not materialize soon.

They will be more challenging and for a longer term, said Kelsey Norman, director of the Rice Universitys Baker Institute Womens Rights, Human Rights & Refugees Program. Biden would need support from both chambers to pass legislation, an unlikely possibility if the Senate retains its Republican majority.

For impacted immigrants and their families, the nuts and bolts of immigration changes to come are an afterthought compared to surviving four years of Trump.

We cannot see the future. But (Biden) is definitely a relief, said Gonzlez. It feels like leaving behind years of abuse; years of attack that weve been having to put up with.

olivia.tallet@chron.com

Twitter: @oliviaptallet

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For Texas immigrants, the switch from Trump to Biden is 'like leaving years of abuse' - Houston Chronicle