High School Student’s Future Put on Hold Because of DACA’s End

Meet Nicolle Uria, a 17-year-old in Annedale, Virginia, who might be deported.

October 23, 2017 5:00 am

On Sept. 5, President Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provided those undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as kids the chance to live a normal life, with a social security number, working papers, and the ability to attend college. Called “dreamers,” these individuals were simply seeking opportunity in America, and with the program being rescinded, it’s thrown nearly 700,000 dreamers’ lives into peril.

The Washington Post profiled one such dreamer, 17-year-old Nicolle Uria, who came to the U.S. from Bolivia as a toddler, and acquired DACA status in 2016. She’s just a normal teenage girl, who’s playing for her high school’s volleyball team—but was deemed ineligible to reapply for DACA status on Sept. 5, and may be deported because of it. “It’s like you’re sailing in a beautiful ocean and then you crash and it’s raining a lot,” Uria told the Post. “And you’re stuck and you don’t know where to go, which way to swim, it’s dark and you can’t see. That’s how I feel right now with DACA maybe ending.”

Uria only found out that she was an undocumented immigrant last year; her parents never told her to protect her. And now she’s the only one in her family who hasn’t secured a temporary green card, so she may be facing deportation. Her mother, who worked three jobs to support her family, told the Post something even more depressing of her daughter: “All she ever knew was America and she thought she was American. She loved her country. It was her country.”

Maybe the saddest thing of all is that “She had always been active in school and the community, but having DACA made her want to do even more,” writes the Post. Besides playing volleyball, she’s a member of the Key Club, is president of her school’s Hispanic Leadership Club, and is a Girl Scouts ambassador.

 

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