Alex Ortiz came to the United States, from Honduras, when he was ten
years old, and has lived most of his life since in Memphis, Tennessee. I
met him while reporting an article on Freedom
University,
an underground school for undocumented immigrants in Georgia. Four years
ago, Ortiz became a beneficiary of Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era policy that offered undocumented
immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children—a population known as
Dreamers—protection from deportation. Ortiz, who received DACA while
attending Tougaloo College, a private, historically black school in
Mississippi, had helped several Freedom University students enroll there
for college degrees.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a long-standing opponent of
DACA, announced that the Trump Administration would cancel the policy.
The move puts almost a million young people, including Ortiz, in legal
limbo.
Ortiz is now twenty-four and works as a college-admissions officer at
Southwest Tennessee Community College. He watched Sessions’s
announcement with a few close friends in the back room of a Mexican
restaurant in Memphis. They had boxes of tissues handy. I spoke to him
later in the day about what the news means to him. This interview has
been edited and condensed.

“When I knew it was Sessions who was going to speak, I knew something was
up. He has a history of being very tough on immigrants. And, to be
honest, I was angry. I was angry at Trump for not showing his face, for
being such a coward as to have someone else fight his battles. I knew
this was going to happen. I’m very politically aware. I knew that
Trump needed a win. He hasn’t done anything during his Presidency, and
he wanted to show that he could do something. He chose the safe way out.

“I like to show my community that we can be strong. I had to step out of
the room and go to the bathroom so that no one would see me cry. I can’t
let my community or my family or anyone else see that, deep inside, I’m
hurting because my future is uncertain.

“Five years ago, I had no idea what my life was going to be like. When
DACA came about, it gave me access to opportunities that weren’t there
before. DACA solidified my hard work. It told me that my mom’s struggle,
her efforts to give me a better life, all her sacrifices—that they were
being validated. It gave me an opportunity not just to help myself
but also to work as a teacher and help my community. It gave me an
opportunity to work in higher education and help kids of all backgrounds
find a way to attain higher education. I’ve been able to intern in
Congress, working under Bennie Thompson, to work as a Google Student
Ambassador, to teach. There are all these things that I’ve done thanks
to DACA. I’m not the only one. We’re all studying, we’re working, we’re
doing everything we need to do. Yet someone like Sessions can still come
on TV and call us illegal aliens?

“When I was in high school, I didn’t know whether I was going to go
to college or not. All my friends were being accepted into college. I
was getting acceptance letters, but I couldn’t afford to pay for
college. I didn’t receive financial aid, no federal Pell grants—nothing.
I got in to twenty-seven schools, but they wouldn’t give me
scholarships.

“Then, a small college in Mississippi, called Tougaloo, offered me a full
ride. I decided to go there. I was fully undocumented at the time. (I
got DACA later, in November, 2013.) From then on, I decided that, if I
was the first undocumented Latino there, I wasn’t going to be the last.
I spoke with the director of admissions, and I told him that I wanted to
get more kids like me in there. We made an arrangement: every year, I
would bring in two more kids. And so I contacted Freedom University, and
I went on social media. I told people to send me their information. I
said, ‘I’ve got this scholarship! You can come here and study for free!
It’s a great environment. People are going to love you. Come and get
your education.’ I got two kids in that year, and then two more the next
year. I’ve been trying to get kids in there every year since then.

“After graduating, I was teaching Spanish at Memphis Business Academy.
The same head of admissions who’d been at Tougaloo when I was there
became the executive director of admissions at Southwest Tennessee
Community College. He asked me to apply for a job as a recruitment
counsellor, since I’d already been doing this work. For me, I knew it
would provide me with that platform that I was looking for—to be able to
help more students. It’s not just me helping undocumented kids get to
college; it’s also kids who are citizens. I had a young mother who was
really frustrated the other day—she gave me ten dollars. She actually
tried to tip me for my services, to tip me for doing my job. Can you
believe that? Her daughter was having a lot of problems with admissions.
I had her in my office for four hours until we resolved it, and we did.
At the end, she said, ‘You’re a blessing. Thank you for helping my
daughter do this.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t want your money. I do this
because I want to.’ ”