Uncertain future for undocumented immigrants who came here as children
Daniela Hinojosa Sada, 19, is double major in computer science and Japanese on a full ride scholarship at Pomona College -- a typical All-American student. Except Sada is an undocumented immigrant, who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico when she was just 1 years old.
Sada said she only found out she wasn’t a citizen when she was 12.
She’s now attending college legally, part of a program to accommodate children who arrived in the U.S. as illegal immigrants. But President-elect Trump has threatened to cancel these types of programs, which could put more than one million students -- like Sada -- at risk of deportation.
Sada said if she was sent back to Mexico, she would “go live with my grandmother -- but that is an important question.”
“People say we will send you back home, but is that really your home?” she said, noting that she grew up in St. Louis, Missouri.
Earlier this week, Pomona College President David Oxtoby wrote an open letter to the incoming administration saying the program helping immigrant students “is both a moral imperative and a national necessity.” It’s now been signed by the presidents of more than 250 colleges and universities across the country.
Oxtoby said “it’s been a very successful program, let’s keep it going.”
Sada said she hopes “Donald Trump can wait a little bit to see how these people can contribute as lawyers, as doctors, before he decides to take away these benefits.”
Sada’s full ride scholarship is worth about $300,000. It’s an education she said would be wasted if she’s deported to Mexico.
