“I was able to go back home in 2021, after 20 years, because my grandpa passed away. And you know for me, he was like the dad figure, you know, someone like my hero in life. And as a DACA recipient you are able to ask for advance parole. You know, you can ask for humanitarian reasons: for someone that is sick or you know, visiting for a funeral, in this case. I remember waking up the next day…he passed away in the evening, the night before. The next day I was like, I can’t– I would not forgive myself if I’m not there.”
Read or listen to Luis’s story
“People are coming here to be better. And that’s taken away from them because of the color of their skin, and their status in this country. But people that are like, at their lowest lows– it’s like what do I have to lose? And they get here and then realize that they have a lot to lose.”
“Back when I started organizing from 2016 until now, I’ve seen our communities, how they have evolved. When I first came in we were you know, we started recognizing. Hey, we’re a little racist. We have colorism issues going on here. We have lgbtqia issues going on here. We need to learn more, we need to be better. We need to stop tokenizing ourselves. We’re not the perfect Dreamer. We all have all these layers to us.”