This is a guest post from filmmaker Carolyn Brown
Americans across the country will go to the polls this fall to decide whether to re-elect Donald Trump. In that election, they are likely also deciding the fate of as many as 800,000 young adults now registered under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).
In September 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced an end to the DACA program. Since then, DACA recipients and their mixed-status families have been living in limbo. Will our country deport such a large swath of talented and inspiring young people? The Supreme Court is expected to take up DACA this summer and decide whether to end it. For those of us whose difference is only status, now is the time to take a stand.
Rubi: A DACA Dreamer in Trump’s America tells the story of how the Trump presidency’s anti-immigrant stance has imperiled the lives and aspirations of DACA recipients and their families. Through revealing interviews, 22-year-old Rubi and her parents recount their family’s harrowing journey to the United States and their subsequent struggles to survive and succeed. Rubi graduates from college and begins a promising career — just as President Trump is elected and rescinds DACA’s expansion and legality.
Rubi and her family’s story resonates because it is the story of the American dream gone awry for scores of undocumented young people who only know America as their home; an America that will not have them if DACA is finally rescinded.
This film ultimately counters current anti-immigrant rhetoric and offers the very humanity so many immigrants are denied in an age of unprecedented ethnic, racial, and anti-Latino hatred. Rubi’s story tells a quintessentially American story: how a new generation is making the country live up to its promise in the face of insurmountable odds.
Watch a preview above.
Rubi: A DACA Dreamer in Trump’s America is coming to public television this spring, distributed by NETA (National Educational Telecommunications Association).
Carolyn Brown is a filmmaker and Senior Lecturer in the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas. She produced, directed and co-wrote Rubi.