BALTIMORE, (Reuters) – In the port city of Baltimore, where Europeans once streamed into America after crossing the Atlantic by ship, a 47-year-old immigrant named Rhonda is in a desperate position. She said she wants to provide for her teenage daughter but cannot get a work permit because she is in the United States illegally.
“I’d like, as a parent, to provide for my daughter’s needs. Homelessness and moving around has been rough,” said Rhonda, a native of Trinidad and Tobago who has lived in the United States since 2001 and spoke on condition that her last name not be used to protect her daughter.
In Houston, Daniel Castillo Garcia said he is apprehensive about his toddler son’s future because the 19-year-old Mexican native is in deportation proceedings after being picked up by U.S. federal agents near the border.
“I’m very worried for my son because I need to provide for him,” said Garcia, who has lived in the United States since being brought into the country by his mother as a child in 2007.
For these two and many others like them, perhaps their only realistic hope is that the U.S. Supreme Court revives President Barack Obama’s 2014 executive action on immigration, which was thrown out by a lower court.
That plan was designed to let roughly 4 million people – those who have lived illegally in the United States at least since 2010, do not have a criminal record and have children who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents – get into a program that shields them from deportation and supplies work permits.
