I was one of the DREAMers who fought for DACA and when it passed, I considered it an organizing victory for the undocumented community. I still remember getting a call from a national organizer who knew DACA was happening prior to Obama making the official announcement. I applied the day it went into effect: August 15, 2012. Since then, I’ve renewed DACA twice.

Because of DACA, I obtained a job where I do what I love: Organize communities that are marginalized and vulnerable. This job gives me benefits and health care, and I can support my family. I’m the main means of support in my family and I’ve helped my parents buy their first home. I finally have a car and I was able to re-enroll into college. I’m paying for college out of pocket, but this job has ensured I can pay for my college degree. With DACA’s advanced parole, I was able to visit Mexico for the first time in 20 years and see my grandma and my mom’s side of family. Traveling has been so fulfilling. I’ve been able to do things and go to places I could have never imagined. DACA has given me the ability to envision this life I could have if I had a permanent status. DACA has its restrictions, but it’s showed me the possibilities.

Before, I was fearful. I was driving without a license. I was never sure if I’d have a job. I was living in a mobile home with three siblings and my parents, all of us compacted into a two-bedroom mobile home where we were constantly threatened with eviction because we were undocumented. Despite paying our way, my family never had anything they could call their own. DACA has given me this freedom of being, of existing, of driving—and now once again, we’re being confronted with uncertainty again. We don’t know what today or tomorrow will bring. It’s a huge burden, not just for myself, but for my family, for our communities.

If DACA is phased out, I have a year to reconfigure my whole life. My work permit and license would expire in October 2018. I’m two semesters away from graduating. If I knew DACA was going away, I couldn’t use any of my money to continue my education because my priorities will have to shift. My fear isn’t being undocumented again. I know what it’s like to live that way; I’ve done it before and I know I can do it again. We are survivors. But it’s more the feeling that we’re being played with. DACA provided this glimpse into a different life, and it’s going to be taken away. We’re being used as a bargaining chip for someone to fulfill their own agenda, and it’s not the first time this has happened to undocumented communities. What about all of the money we have paid into this country as DACA recipients? We’ve kept social security alive, and we don’t get that benefit. Do we get that money back?

It doesn’t hurt anyone to allow us to have DACA, and now we are priorities for deportation. That’s something I am fearful of. The administration—because of DACA—has my data; they have my personal information and the information of every DACA recipient. It’s a lot to process. But they won’t instill fear in me. I won’t crawl back into the shadows. We won’t crawl back into the shadows.