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This story was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of The 19th.

LOS ANGELES — Scattered among the shrubs on the southern border lie belongings migrants left behind — toothbrushes, water bottles, baseball caps. Some of the owners forged north, crossing the boundary undetected. Others were apprehended or succumbed to dehydration, drowning or one of the unimaginable dangers in the harsh desert that straddles Mexico and the United States.

Angélica Reyes survived. At nine months old, she made the journey that could have claimed her life just as it started.

Since 1994, approximately 10,000 migrants have died in the borderlands. That year, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect. Designed to open trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico, the now-defunct policy has faced criticism for depressing Mexican wages. Their income flatlining, Reyes said, her parents left the city of Guadalajara, in the western part of Mexico, and headed with her to Los Angeles. They did not have authorization to live in the United States.

Reyes is now 32, though she remembers knowing she was undocumented as early as first grade.

“My mom was very cognizant of the discrimination and the obstacles that I would face throughout my life,” she said. “She made it clear, like, ‘You can’t mess up. You need to be twice as good to get half of the respect. You need to really prove that you earned your spot.’”

To do that, Reyes earned the good grades that set her up to become a history teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She is one of about 15,000 teachers — and among the more than 835,000 undocumented people — who have received temporary permission to live, work and study in the United States through an Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Women represent over half of DACA recipients, whose future in this country has been under threat by legal challenges to the program’s existence and the anti-immigration agenda of President Donald Trump.

If DACA ends, the goal of ongoing litigation,  700 education personnel, including teachers and teacher aides, would lose their jobs each month for two years as their work permits are revoked, according to FWD.us, an immigration reform organization. In California, the state with the most DACA recipients, 200 educators would lose their jobs monthly. In Texas, 100 would.

DACA-recipient teachers relate firsthand to the estimated 620,000 undocumented K-1 2 students, who confide in them about their experiences in immigrant families. They show youth that regardless of legal status, it’s possible to attain one’s professional goals. Many of these teachers are also activists, fighting for their students, themselves and other marginalized people. They see themselves as assets to schools.

“My immigration status inspires both my undocumented and documented students because they know all the obstacles that are faced by folks with my immigration status can be overcome,” Reyes said. “They know that if I could do it, that’s something that they could do as well.”

Without undocumented teachers, educator shortages across states could worsen. California has spent about $1.6 billion since the 2016-17 school year to tackle its teacher shortage. Still, the state issued 11 percent fewer teaching credentials between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. Last year, it enacted legislation to eliminate barriers to entry, dropping a standardized test teaching candidates had to pass to demonstrate competence in math, reading and writing. But since undocumented immigrants aren’t widely perceived to be career professionals, the fact that schoolchildren nationwide depend on them has received scant attention in the broader immigration debate.

Maria Miranda, elementary vice president of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) labor union, said undocumented teachers “bring a different perspective to the table, a different skill set.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teacher labor union, said DACA recipients in classrooms have strengthened the United States.

“They are role models, like all teachers, and should be treated as such, but instead, they are made to feel uncertain and fearful as their protections are challenged in court and as the Trump administration promotes mass deportations, even from sensitive locations like schools that were once considered off limits,” Weingarten said. “Immigration reform can’t be used as an excuse to rip teachers out of classrooms, where they are so desperately needed.”

When Reyes was about to register for the SAT during her senior year in high school, one misinformed guidance counselor asked her why she planned to take the college entrance exam, insisting that higher education was off limits to undocumented students.

“I was devastated. It broke my heart,” Reyes said. “I remember crying and telling my mom, ‘I worked hard, for what?’”

Since 2001, however, California has extended access to in-state college tuition to undocumented students who have lived there long term. Unaware of this law and under the assumption that her counselor was correct, Reyes missed the deadline for the SAT and for the application to University of California schools, so she enrolled in a community college she could afford, a common path for many undocumented immigrants.

Then, in 2011, a state law was enacted that made her cry tears of gratitude: the California DREAM Act. The policy allows undocumented immigrants who entered the United States before they were 16 to obtain financial aid if they’ve earned qualifying credits at California schools. These young people have been nicknamed Dreamers after the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, a 2001 federal bill that would have given them legal status had it succeeded.

Reyes said that when she decided to apply to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a community college counselor took in her light brown skin and wavy black mane and without so much as seeing the 4.0 GPA in her transcript, told her to apply somewhere less competitive.

“I’m a competitive student!” Reyes recalled balking. “She opened my chart and she was, like, ‘Oh, you actually are.’ Her tune changed so quickly. It was really infuriating because if I had believed her, like many students believe counselors, I would have not gone to UCLA.”

In college, Reyes had to make a choice about her career path. Her research project on youth activism at Abraham Lincoln High School, where she graduated in 2010, had drawn her to education. “I realized that’s where I was needed,” she said.

It was at Lincoln High in March 1968 that students spearheaded the protests known as the Chicano Blowouts or East Los Angeles Walkouts. With signs stating “School Not Prison” and “We Are Not Dirty Mexicans,” almost 15,000 youth from Lincoln and other schools in historically Mexican-American East L.A. walked out of classes for a week to protest their substandard education.

Back then, students could be paddled for speaking Spanish, and with few advanced courses at Eastside schools, they were routinely steered to vocational classes like auto shop. These inequities contributed to a 60 percent dropout rate in the area. Jailed for their activism against these circumstances, the teenagers garnered community support that ushered in sweeping policy changes — bilingual instruction, ethnic studies and more Latino teachers.

Today, the carnicerías, bungalow homes and palm trees along North Broadway Avenue, leading to 93 acres of green hills, offer no hint of the past tumult, but a mural at Lincoln commemorates the walkouts of nearly six decades ago.

Through her research, which also explored youth activism of the 2010s, Reyes learned that contemporary Lincoln High students continued to have unmet needs, such as support applying for college financial aid or accessing legal services as members of immigrant households. So when Lincoln High teachers asked if she wanted to develop a space to serve students, Reyes threw herself into the effort. The Paula Crisostomo Dream Center — named after a lead activist of the Chicano Blowouts and the inspiration for the 2006 film “Walkout” — opened at Lincoln in 2015.

“We established programming for immigrant students, for immigrant parents. We did immigrant and educational history,” Reyes said. “It’s still a resource for students at Lincoln, and we’ve expanded it to several other schools.”

Working at the Dream Center for three years convinced her that teaching was the best way to reach undocumented and marginalized youth. Rather than dismiss them, as she had been dismissed by school counselors, she would inspire students to excel academically regardless of legal status. In 2012, four years before she graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and six years before she earned her master’s in education from the university, DACA enabled undocumented students like herself to become career professionals.

In 2017, the year Reyes began teaching, the Migration Policy Institute estimated that as many as 20,000 DACA-eligible individuals were involved in education occupations. But today the number of DACA-recipient educators is 25 percent lower as litigation has frozen new applications.

It’s complicated: Those two words capture Reyes’ feelings about DACA. Although the program allowed her to teach, she has long viewed it as flawed, exploitative and a “constant reminder” she isn’t “fully accepted.”

DACA stems from the activism of undocumented college students frustrated that the DREAM Act failed and that their immigration status would limit their potential, said Jennifer R. Nájera, author of “Learning to Lead: Undocumented Students Mobilizing Education.” Fighting for immigrant rights, they found a purpose.

Like the DREAM Act, DACA was reserved for young people who came to the United States as children and didn’t have criminal histories. “They had to graduate from high school or college or go to the military, show ‘good moral character,’” said Nájera, an associate professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Instead of citizenship, Obama’s executive order “provided temporary relief from deportation, a two-year relief specifically, that could be renewed, and a work permit, which was a big deal.”

While DACA recipients cherished their professional opportunities, some contended that the policy cast them as second-class citizens, Nájera said.

That includes Reyes.

“I knew it was a Band-Aid,” she said. “In fact, when I first started teaching, my DACA expired because of an issue with the application. They had asked me if I was in a gang, and apparently I didn’t check off the X hard enough, so I wasn’t hired at the beginning of the year. I remember feeling this immense frustration.”

Los Angeles Unified employs about 300 DACA-recipient school personnel, according to Miranda of the UTLA labor union. As Reyes’ teaching career started, DACA weathered the first of multiple legal challenges. Trump rescinded the program during his first term, a move the Supreme Court later blocked; at the time, Reyes told her students about possibly losing her job. Since then, she has endured several other threats to DACA , though she’s now pained to tell her students that the program isn’t accepting new applicants.

DACA, she said, must be replaced with a sustainable alternative.

In a December interview, Trump said, “We’re going to have to do something with” DACA recipients. “They were brought into this country many years ago” and “in many cases, they’ve become successful.”

But that sympathy has been absent from his immigration policies since he resumed office. He has issued an executive order prohibiting undocumented college students from receiving in-state tuition. He has also lifted restrictions on immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations” such as churches, hospitals and schools, prompting parents nationwide to keep kids out of class.

“A lot of times, the children are U.S. citizens and the parents are concerned,” Reyes said. “But I’ve had students who shared that their parents are U.S. citizens, and they’re still scared because they know that U.S. citizens are also caught up in these raids. So, this isn’t about criminality. It’s about the targeting of Brown folks.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other federal authorities reportedly detained or deported at least 10 U.S. citizens, including children, in the first 100 days of Trump’s second term.

Last month, the California state superintendent presented Senate Bill 48 to limit ICE appearances at schools as absences have spiked — and schools could lose millions of dollars since their funding is tied to average daily student attendance. About half of California children belong to families that include at least one immigrant parent, while one in five live in mixed-status families with at least one undocumented parent.

“It’s very taxing emotionally for our members and our students,” Miranda said of ICE enforcement. “We have students at the elementary level who are terrified of seeing anyone in uniform. Some of them are so young that they don’t know the difference between the police and immigration. It’s a very scary moment.”

When Trump targeted DACA during his first term, Reyes warned in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece that disbanding the program could upend public education. But now she says her students deserve more than DACA’s “breadcrumbs.”

“We need to fight for something new because my kids want to be chefs and doctors and lawyers, but they’re being held back by their immigration status,” she said. “It’s excruciating in two ways: One, I want my students to have the opportunities that they deserve to serve the community. And, two, I don’t know when I’m going to be taken from them because of my own uncertainty.”

For now, she knows that her presence makes a difference at her high school. Los Angeles Unified has an immigrant student body of about 30,000 students, according to UTLA. Of those, one in four is undocumented. After Reyes shared her immigration status with students during a recent lunchtime conversation, she said a ninth grader confessed that she planned to quit school because she, too, is undocumented. Learning Reyes managed to become a teacher made the girl reconsider.

“It was really beautiful to see that, like it reignited her hope to have a bright future,” Reyes said.

Although the risks of revealing her status frighten her, her conscience compels her to, Reyes said. She quoted Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata: “It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

Staying silent as the president attacks immigrants would make it hard for Reyes to face the youth in her life — her son, especially.

Whenever a state turned red on Election Night, Nathan Reyes felt his anxiety shoot up. Still, he held out hope Kamala Harris would win. Then the Electoral College math made it plain: Donald Trump would be president again.

Although he’s a U.S. citizen, Nathan wondered what lay ahead for his undocumented relatives under a president promising mass deportations.

“I feel worried for them because if they get deported, what am I going to do?” he asked. “Where am I going to stay?”

So, he began to plan. He and his family would “have to pick our poison” — stay in a country hostile to their presence or self-deport together to Mexico regardless of citizenship status.

That her son, with a pile of ringlets and a round cherubic face, was even considering these options stunned Reyes. Nathan is in seventh grade.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this kid is 12,’” Angélica Reyes said. “Why is he talking about this?’”

Rummaging through a bin of childhood possessions in her mother’s bedroom last year, Reyes found a poem she wrote in fourth grade about her fear of police. Her parents were street food vendors, an occupation California criminalized until 2018, so Reyes realized growing up that one brush with the law could have seen them deported.

Just as she did not have a childhood free of deportation fears, neither has her son.

Nathan, now 13, is hardly the only youth pondering the possibility of a relative’s departure, according to Lisette Sanchez, a psychologist in Long Beach, California. She said children are leaving school with “Know Your Rights” cards advising them of their civil liberties during ICE encounters, but they may not understand the information.

“They’re just feeling fear,” she said. “They’re being told something’s gonna happen. So mental health wise, you’re looking at chronic anxiety. You’re looking at hypervigilance.”

To gain some sense of control, they may overconsume social media, leading to racing thoughts, rapid heart rate and sleeping difficulties.

“It’s this chronic nonstop anxiety because the state of uncertainty feels never-ending, and in many ways, it is not ending, right?” Sanchez said. “There’s different news every day.”

By speaking openly with children, parents can help them better manage stress, she said. Teachers, if they’re permitted, can broach the topic of immigration. Nathan appreciated how his Spanish teacher led a class discussion after the election.

“Sharing your feelings and emotions and finding that a lot of other people are feeling very similar can bring comfort to you,” he said.

Reyes gave birth to her son while she was in college and briefly wed to his father. She applied for legal status as an immediate family member of a U.S. citizen, her spouse. But years passed before the federal government responded to her request, she said. By then, her marriage had ended.

“I don’t think people understand how long the path to citizenship can be, what it looks like, how costly and time-intensive it is,” Sanchez said.

Reyes, who has not remarried, said being undocumented seeps into every aspect of her life, including romantic relationships. She feels obligated to tell prospective partners about her status.

“I remember to always be upfront, like, ‘Hey, I’m undocumented. I don’t want you to think I’m going to use you for papers,’” she said.

Reyes lives in one of the country’s 4.7 million mixed-status households, which include undocumented individuals and people with legal status or U.S. citizenship. If she gets deported, she has arranged for others to care for her son.

Her sister, two years younger, is a U.S. citizen. Asked if she resents that twist of fate, Reyes said, “I’m happy that she gets to be safe. I think that there’s a lot of pain and guilt for her.”

Her sister realizes, Reyes said, that her entire family could be taken away.

Should she be forced out of the only country she considers home, Reyes wants her son to know this: “I would never willingly leave you. I am dedicated to you. I love you, and I will always be working as hard as possible to get back to you.”

For Nathan, it is mind-boggling that anyone would want his mother out. He doesn’t understand why politicians demonize immigrants. Trump launched his first presidential campaign calling them criminals and continues to malign them.

“My mom has done a lot of good for her community,” Nathan said. “She has organized a finders keepers closet where people who don’t have some resources they need, like canned food or clothes, can take what they need.”

Just as Nathan defends her honor, Reyes vouches for her parents. Her mother is now a nail technician and her father is a food vendor. Growing up, she said, she watched them visit the sick, volunteer at churches and fundraise for the poor.

“Whenever they saw a need, they stepped up, and they didn’t wait for someone else to help,” she said.

She’s hurt when people sympathize with Dreamers while disparaging their parents, that the immigration system paints family members as saints or sinners. The DACA recipients she’s researched feel similarly, Nájera said.

“Many of the students that I interviewed were always talking about their parents,” Nájera said. “They did not want their stories to be divorced from their parents and their family stories. These families, they’re units.”

But the Dream Act caused a migrant generational divide, insinuating that those who arrived in this country as children deserve citizenship, while their parents and others who arrived as adults do not, Nájera said.

Migration often occurs out of necessity. For example, after NAFTA took effect in 1994, U.S. agricultural exports flooded Mexico, displacing workers, according to Edward Alden, a distinguished visiting professor in the College of Business and Economics at Western Washington University. Four years earlier, over 4 million Mexican migrants were in the United States, a figure that ballooned to nearly 13 million — around 9 percent of Mexico’s population — by 2008.

Reyes said NAFTA crushed the bakery business her father’s side of the family owned because it could not compete with the U.S. companies that swooped in. Her parents migrated north to earn higher wages.

Today, economic instability is but one of the reasons that motivate migrants.

“A lot of the Venezuelans are leaving Venezuela because it’s a violent, dangerous place, and the government has destroyed the economy in different ways,” Alden said. “Same thing out of Central America. These are people who aren’t necessarily leaving for economic reasons. They’re doing it for personal safety reasons.”

Reyes said she has Central American students who fled horrors. She wants them to feel safe in the United States, and the fact Los Angeles Unified has pledged not to cooperate with immigration officials voluntarily provides some comfort. Run by a formerly undocumented superintendent, the sanctuary district blocked Homeland Security agents from entering two schools in April.

The fear of raids on campuses has traumatized her students, Reyes said. “It’s so difficult to convince my students that they are worthy of love and that they’re worthy of respect and that they deserve civil rights.”

It is equally difficult to keep advocating for herself, she said. But as the threat of deportation looms, she has no choice but to keep fighting.

“It’s hard to know that I can’t earn citizenship and that I can’t give my kid stability or safety,” she said. “I feel like if I could earn it, I would have three citizenships. I would have put in the work.”

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