Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students celebrate in front of the U.S. Supreme Courtroom after the Supreme Court rejects President Donald Trump's bid to end legal protections for young immigrants on Thursday, June 18 in Washington.

Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students gloat in forepart of the U.Due south. Supreme Court afterward the Supreme Court rejects President Donald Trump'southward bid to cease legal protections for immature immigrants on Th, June eighteen in Washington.

With the door to apply for DACA open for the outset time in more than iii years, hundreds of loftier school and higher students in California are rushing to apply, fearful information technology will exist slammed shut again.

"Nosotros're on a mad nuance to put out as much educational content for folks as possible," said Juliana Macedo practise Nascimento, the state and local policy manager for United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country. "We know that this window is open, but we don't know for how long."

A federal guess ordered the Us Citizenship and Immigration Services on Dec. 4 to fully restore Deferred Activeness for Childhood Arrivals, the program that provides temporary protection from deportation and permission to work for about 700,000 immature people who came to the U.Southward. as children.

Courtroom battles ensued after the Trump administration attempted to finish DACA in September 2017, and first-time applications have non been accepted since so. Although the attempt to end the program was described as "arbitrary and capricious" by the U.South. Supreme Court in June, the Trump administration continued denying new applications until December. 7, after a federal judge ordered them to begin accepting them.

Still, the future of DACA is uncertain. A hearing on a separate lawsuit, in which Texas and six other states sued to end DACA, is scheduled for Dec. 22 in a Houston federal courtroom. Some attorneys are concerned that the agency could again stop accepting new applications sometime afterward that date.

"We are trying to get as many applications in before there's a ruling in the Texas case, which is hanging out in that location," said Maria Blanco, executive manager of the University of California Immigrant Legal Services Middle. "Everybody's working literally weekends and late at night."

An estimated 300,000 people are now eligible to employ for DACA for the first time. This includes some 55,500 people who take turned 15, the minimum historic period to use, since the regime stopped accepting new applications. To be eligible for DACA, applicants must take come to the U.Southward. before they turned 16 and have lived here since June xv, 2007, in addition to attending school or having graduated high school and not been convicted of certain crimes.

Credit: Ines Martinez

Ines Martinez turned 15 in 2017, correct before the Trump administration stopped accepting new applications for DACA.

Ines Martinez, 18, a first-year student at Cabrillo College in Aptos, most Santa Cruz, turned 15 but a couple of months earlier DACA was rescinded in 2017. Martinez was brought to the United States right before she turned 2 years erstwhile and has lived in Santa Cruz always since. In loftier school, she had been excited to apply for DACA to exist able to piece of work and help her family unit and take some protection from deportation. Her family unit began contacting lawyers and saving up to pay the fee, simply merely a couple of months after her 15th birthday, the Trump administration stopped accepting new applications.

"I was heartbroken that it was taken away every bit soon equally I was able to apply. That was what I was depending on, that I would be getting DACA," Martinez said.

She is now working to collect school and medical records needed to prove she has been in the country since 2007.

"Really going through the process is something actually exciting for me, you know, considering it'due south similar, 'Oh, it's actually going to happen this time,'" Martinez said.

Counselors and attorneys working with undocumented students at high schools, community colleges, California Land University and University of California campuses say this calendar month they take seen a huge increase in the number of students requesting legal services or help applying for DACA.

At the nine UC undergraduate campuses, Blanco estimates there are 400 to 600 students who are eligible for DACA but were not able to apply until now, because they were as well young before.

"There's tremendous pent-up demand," Blanco said. "All the undocumented students pretty much that started this year, unless they're a transfer student, none of them were ever able to utilise for DACA. So they all started the year without DACA."

At Rio Hondo College, a customs college in Whittier, in Los Angeles Canton, the look for legal appointments for undocumented students has stretched out to two weeks, said Angel Aguilar Garcia, student services banana for undocumented students at the higher.

The mood among undocumented students is a mix of excitement and uncertainty, said Fina Espino, office coordinator for the Cal State San Marcos DREAMer Resources Office, which offers counseling and legal services to undocumented students. Espino said having DACA will help students be able to piece of work and support themselves while completing their studies, and volition also allow other opportunities for students, like the ability to attend graduate school in other states, even if they practise not offer in-state tuition for undocumented students, like California does. Nonetheless, the looming Texas case and the lack of a permanent solution that includes a path to citizenship makes students feel unsafe.

"I had ane student who said, 'Simply is this for existent though? Because on the 22nd there'southward that other courtroom hearing.' For our part, non knowing for certain, information technology'southward a roller coaster for united states likewise, because we don't know how to advise our students. And it's a temporary affair that we're giving them. We have to tell them, 'This can change at whatever time,'" Espino said.

The pandemic has fabricated it harder for attorneys and counselors to help large numbers of students at a fourth dimension in one place. In addition, applicants now accept to prove 13 years of residency in the U.s., which can testify challenging, especially if back in 2007 they were infants or toddlers and not even so enrolled in school.

"This is going to exist a big challenge. It'south like a large puzzle we need to solve," said Eleazar Valdez, outreach and workshops coordinator for the Key Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative, which runs the Dream Resources Center to help students and families in the Fresno Unified School District. Valdez says he tells people to call back dorsum, "What were yous doing in 2007? Did you have your child to the dentist? Perchance you went to the library to check out a book. Anything that has the proper noun and date."

When a court ordered the federal regime to accept new DACA applications once more, Los Angeles middle school teacher Miriam González Ávila said her first thought was of her younger sister, who volition now be able to apply, and her quondam students.

González Ávila, who has DACA condition herself and was one of the plaintiffs who sued to keep the program in place in the case that went to the Supreme Courtroom, was teaching 8th course when DACA was rescinded in 2017. Her students inspired her to fight for DACA in courtroom, she said. When the Trump assistants canceled the programme, some of her students were visibly upset, either because they would no longer be able to apply or because they had older siblings with DACA.

She often thinks about those who had just started their freshman yr of loftier school and were about to turn 15 and exist able to apply for DACA when the Trump assistants canceled the program.

"Fifty-fifty though I'm not in direct contact with them, I think about them all the time. I call back about ane specific pupil whose mom was saying she was really worried about him because he felt like giving upwardly," González Ávila said.

González Ávila is relieved more people will be able to apply for DACA, but she said it is fourth dimension for Congress to enact a permanent solution with a pathway to citizenship.

"These by couple of years since the rescission of DACA, information technology'southward been a back-and-along, you can't always feel completely comfortable," González Ávila said. "Information technology's this game that the government keeps playing with united states of america, and I think information technology'southward time for a permanent solution, so nosotros can live our lives and become to school without the pressure of, 'Am I going to be safe today? What about tomorrow?'"

Advocates, teachers, counselors and DACA recipients from across California all voiced the same sentiment.

"We hear a lot from young people who thought they would be eligible but entered the country a piffling late. They're just as deserving, but because of an arbitrary date, they're kept outside," Macedo practice Nascimento said. "Nosotros're going to continue to fight for protection for as many people equally possible and besides for permanent protections through Congress."

EdSource reporter Betty Márquez Rosales contributed to this article.

To get more reports similar this one, click here to sign up for EdSource'southward no-cost daily e-mail on latest developments in education.