Armenta, with her parents at a high school soccer game, is now at UW-Madison.
One of Karen Perez-Wilson’s earliest memories is moving through the desert perched atop a stranger’s shoulders. She was 3 years old and part of a group crossing the border from Mexico into the United States.
“I remember having a lot of scratches on my legs and arms; I think it was because of the thorn bushes,” says Perez-Wilson, who is now 23 and a student at UW-Madison.
“I also remember my mom had a little backpack with a gallon of water and shortcake bread. The water had spilled all over the bread,” she says. “I always get a little emotional, because I remember my mom crying, how bad she felt that she was feeding me that because that was all she had.”
Perez-Wilson’s parents were already living in the Madison area at that time. They had left their daughter with family in Mexico, hoping to work for a few years, save up money and return to her. But when they became pregnant with Karen’s younger brother, they knew they couldn’t wait any longer to reunite. So Perez-Wilson’s mother went back home to fetch her.
It would take them two attempts to get across the border. But since then, the family has built a life in Wisconsin. Her parents had three more children, all American-born citizens. Karen Perez-Wilson is the first person in her family to graduate from high school. Since getting an associate degree at Madison College, she’s been working on her bachelor’s degree at UW-Madison, with hopes of becoming a lawyer. In the meantime, she also works as a para educator with a local school district.
Her efforts have been been made easier in recent years by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (or DACA), which allows her to legally work and drive.
Since the DACA program began in 2012, almost 800,000 people have been accepted to it. More than half live in California, Texas, New York and Illinois. In Wisconsin, 7,565 people have been accepted into the program, as of March 31.
On Sept. 5, President Trump called for an end to the program and urged Congress to pass replacement legislation.
Now, Perez-Wilson and others who have signed up for DACA are suddenly facing the possibility of deportation, potentially as early as March. The process of signing up for DACA required participants to give out a lot of information about their families. All along, applicants worried that might expose their undocumented parents. Now, with the program under attack and an anti-immigration president in office, are the families of DACA participants even more at risk?
Isthmus checked in with three DACA recipients to hear their stories. Although they are worried about being deported, often they fear more for their parents and siblings.
Perez-Wilson treasures a photograph that reminds her how hard her parents have worked to secure her a better future. It shows her parents bundled up and trudging through the snow on a 2.5-mile walk to work at the Applebee’s on Whitney Way.
Perez-Wilson says her parents have continuously dismissed her fears for them, saying they only want her to have a better life. “My mom would cross 100 borders just to give me a good future.”
Selina Armenta came to Wisconsin when she was 3 and spent much of her childhood unaware of her undocumented status. “All through elementary school, I didn’t know what that meant or that that was me,” she says.
In 2006, when millions around the United States protested in the “Day without immigrants,” Armenta began to understand her situation. The realization sent her into a depression.
“Going into high school, I was pretty unmotivated because of it. I didn’t think that going to college would be a possibility,” she says. “We have to pay out-of-state tuition. So I didn’t think it would be a possibility for me.”
But her mom talked to her teachers at West High School and they rallied around her, getting her enrolled in the AVID college prep program and helping her apply for UW-Madison’s PEOPLE scholarship program.
That enabled her to attend her dream school, UW, where she studies pre-law and Chican@ and Latin@ studies. She wants to be lawyer and works at the RISE Law Center, which specializes in immigration and family law.
When Armenta was 16, she signed up for DACA. It was a decision the family wrestled with. “We were hesitating at first. We were giving out a lot of information and we didn’t know what was going to happen to that information,” she says. “A lot of information tied me to my parents. There was hesitation, but a lot of people were doing it.”
She found DACA made life easier. She was able to get a driver’s license and legally work. “That took a big weight off my parents,” she says. “I have my own money and am able to cover things with minimal assistance from my parents.”
Lupe Salmeron’s parents grew up in Mexico City and got pregnant with her when they were each 17.
“Both of them grew up poor, so they had to leave school to take care of me,” Salmeron says. “They had a really hard time making ends meet.”
Her father had an older brother living in Madison and he offered to help him get a job here. Salmeron’s mother followed him to Madison a couple of years later, leaving Lupe with her grandparents.
“It was just supposed to be temporary,” Salmeron says. “They were going to work together so they could make money faster.”
But the years slipped by and her parents had another child, a U.S. citizen. So they made plans to bring Lupe — who was then 6 — to the United States. They paid a woman with documents who had a daughter about the same age to fly her back to Mexico. She would pretend that Lupe was her daughter.
“Leading up to it I had to learn some phrases. I didn’t know English. I remember practicing with my grandmother,” she says. Her grandmother stressed that Lupe had to pretend that the woman bringing her was her mother, or else the ruse might be discovered.
“For me, it wasn’t a big deal, I didn’t know what was going on,” she says.
When she got to Madison, she found a 2-year-old brother she didn’t know and parents she hardly remembered. “My parents told me when I came I didn’t call them mom and dad, I called them señora and señor,” she says. “I didn’t really comprehend that they were my parents.”
Nevertheless, she quickly settled into life as an American. She was fluent in English by the end of her first school year here.
As she got older, fitting in became harder. “I’d tell people I’m from Mexico, which I thought was kind of cool. Then they’d yell out things, ‘you’re a spic, you’re illegal.’”
Eventually, she started telling people she was born at St. Mary’s just like her brother. She went through a phase of wanting to be blonde like her classmates.
When she turned 15, her parents insisted she apply for DACA. Although her parents had always been upfront about her undocumented status, the full weight of it didn’t hit home until she started planning for college.
In one high school class, the students were required to fill out a federal financial aid application for college. “I just sat there and cried because I couldn’t do it,” she says. Even under DACA, undocumented students don’t qualify for federal financial aid.
She wanted to study at UW-Madison, but she soon realized that was impossible for her — out-of-state tuition including room and board tops $50,000 a year.
Eventually she looked into Edgewood College. While still pricey, with scholarships it’s within her reach. She’s studying political science and hopes to one day be a lawyer or an elected official.
Perez-Wilson recently had an agonizing discussion with her younger siblings, 19, 16 and 14. Since she speaks better English than her parents, Perez-Wilson helps look out for them, attending parent-teacher meetings and helping them navigate the school system.
She wanted to prepare them for the possibility that she could be deported.
“I have a folder at home and I sat down and talked to my siblings about it. That folder contains all the numbers they should contact, information for my bank account and emails. It’s like you’re preparing for the worst but you have to,” she says. “My sister was crying saying, ‘Why are you doing this?’ Trust me, I don’t want this, but I’d rather you know and be prepared than be running around and afraid of what to do.”
The fear of deportation now hangs over all DACA participants. They want major immigration reform, not just the preservation of DACA. Although the program has helped thousands, it didn’t create a path to citizenship. And it doesn’t help anyone who came here after they were 16.
A memory of Perez-Wilson’s parents’ long walk to work and dedication.
“I really agree with DACA, but I wish that it were available for adults and our parents,” Perez-Wilson says. “If you live in this country and have done nothing but contribute to it and have no criminal background, you should have the right to be here. Isn’t that what America’s about? Pursuing our dreams for a better life? Does America really want to be known for killing all these dreams?”
Armenta just recently renewed her DACA permit, so she’s hopeful she has at least another two years in the United States. But she’s fearful about her parents being deported and what would happen to her siblings if that happened.
“I’m 21 years old now. I can figure things out on my own,” she says. “But I still have two siblings, my sister’s 14 and my brother’s 10. They depend on my parents very heavily.”
Now that Salmeron is semi-independent, living on her own at college, she has spent a lot of time imagining how difficult her parents had it and how hard they worked so she could have a better life.
“Especially now, going into college and being on my own, I see how much my parents have struggled,” she says. “They do everything, not just mine, but millions of other immigrant parents. They take the worst jobs, they work crazy hours, sometimes multiple jobs, just to give their kids a chance at life. That’s astonishing.
“A lot of times, when it comes to immigration, people criminalize the parents and celebrate the students,” Salmeron adds. “We need to not do that. Even though our parents don’t go to school, it’s not their fault. They haven’t done anything wrong.”