DACA recipient expresses worries following Trump's victory

PHOENIX - President-elect Trump has made it clear that mass deportation is part of his agenda when he's sworn into office, but no one knows how that plan would be carried out.

On Nov. 8, we spoke with a local DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient who could be impacted.

"We are not what you're seeing on TV," said Reyna Montoya, founder of a group named Aliento. "We are people who have been living here for over 10 years, who call Arizona home."

Montoya is one of more than 20,000 DACA recipients living across Arizona, and one of more than 500,000 across the country. The program, which began under the Obama Administration, is now more than a decade old. It impacted children who were brought to the U.S. by a relative without legal status.

Aliento is a local organization that helps immigrant families.

"We're encouraging DACA recipients to renew, as soon as possible," said Montoya. "Make sure that you are submitting your renewal. I'm actually planning on working on my renewal this weekend to ensure that it gets renewed before the inauguration. I have a bit more time."

During the first Trump administration, he tried to rescind DACA, but the Supreme Court stopped it in 2020. This time around, the high court's center has shifted to the right, and a lawsuit in Texas challenging the program will likely make its way there.

Montoya believes if the administration has the money, Trump will follow through.

"They can definitely do a lot of deportations," Montoya said. "President Obama was deporting 1,000 people a day, so imagine someone now, whose number one priority is to deport millions of people. So I think it's going to be how fast they can do it, and if they're going to be appropriating some funds."

Montoya says the Biden Administration wouldn't be able to help them: It would be up to Congress, and she's not optimistic.

"There hasn't been an agreement around even border security or Dreamers, even though that 80% of the population support Dreamers," Montoya said. "We have continuously been a political punt for them."