Lawmakers are seeking common ground on DACA, but comprehensive immigration reform will be a challenge for Democrats – By Bryan Mena (Texas Tribune) / Mar 15 2021
The Senate filibuster stands as a key obstacle to Democrats’ priorities.
EL PASO — When Juan Paul Flores Vazquez was about 4 years old, he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with his aunt for what he thought was just a trip to a circus in California — “El Circo de Kiko,” inspired by “El Chavo del Ocho,” a popular Mexican television sitcom that began airing in the 1970s.
But instead of being away from his hometown of Mexicali, Mexico, for only a few hours, he stayed to reunite with his mother, who had already crossed the border. He has been living in the country for almost two decades.
Flores Vazquez now lives in El Paso. The 22-year-old is only one of about 105,500 participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program living in Texas. The Obama-era program with a degree of bipartisan support allows people brought into the country as children to avoid the threat of deportation.
“For the past four years, the DACA program has been under attack, so it’s been a lot of stress and trauma for me. And now I’m in a border town, so I have to be extra careful about Border Patrol,” Flores Vazquez said. “But I’m still hopeful.”
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