College Track Stands with Our DREAMer Scholars and Staff

In 2017 President Trump attempted to end DACA, President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protected some of the roughly 800,000 young people known as “DREAMers” who entered the country illegally as children. That challenge has been tied up in the courts ever since. On Oct. 5, 2022, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans issued a long-awaited ruling that unfortunately upheld a 2021 lower court decision that DACA is illegal, but the judges sent the case back to the Federal District Court in Houston to assess how the Biden administration’s new August regulations affect that ruling.

Although the court also said that current DACA recipients can continue to renew their status, College Track is concerned by the direction this case is heading—and what that direction means not only for our 87 DACA recipients but our hundreds of DREAMer students, alumni, and staff.

“Together the College Track DREAMer community has faced many times of uncertainty, yet stayed motivated and resilient in our educational and career journeys,” said College Track Manager of DREAMer Services Darwin Velasquez, who is also a DACA recipient and a College Track alumnus with two sisters in the College Track program. “Over the past five years, I have witnessed many of us graduate from college, then attend graduate school or start careers. Many more are on the path to do so, regardless of what happens with DACA.”

“College Track has stood with our undocumented students and staff since our inception 25 years ago. We are incredibly proud of our hundreds of DREAMers and DACA recipients for persevering in both their education and their careers—especially in the face of the many barriers and uncertainty with which they have had to go about their daily lives,” said Dr. Shirley M. Collado, President and CEO of College Track. “College Track will continue to support all of our DREAMer scholars as they pursue a future of opportunity, choice, and power. It is urgent that President Biden and Congress pass permanent, comprehensive protections for DREAMers, including a pathway to citizenship.”