Aspirations on hold, UC students await court ruling on DACA
November 7, 2017 •
Evelyn Valdez-Ward. Credit: Courtesy of Valdez-Ward.
As a high school honors student, Evelyn Valdez-Ward did everything she could to be competitive for college. She took advanced placement classes in biology and calculus, and spent time volunteering at the local humane society, food bank and homeless shelter.
It was only when she began applying to colleges that she learned the truth.
“My mom started crying. She explained that I did not have a social security number, and that I may not be able to go to college because I was undocumented,” Valdez-Ward said this week in a legal declaration about how her life has been affected by the Trump administration’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Valdez-Ward and roughly 800,000 other immigrants who came to the United States as children received legal protections through the DACA program that have allowed them to work and go to school. They are now in a state of limbo, wondering whether their academic dreams will vanish, or worse: that they will find themselves facing deportation from the country they have lived in their whole lives.
Valdez-Ward was one of 10 UC students and alums to share their life stories in court documents filed Nov. 1 as part of a federal lawsuit by the University of California, President Napolitano and other plaintiffs seeking to block the Trump administration from ending DACA.
Read full story about the DACA students.
