Like most high schoolers, Mario couldn’t wait to get his driver’s license. Around 2017, while living with his family in Lithia Springs, he hoped to have an all-American student experience: driving to school, driving around with friends, and—most importantly—driving to any available field to play soccer.
It wasn’t until he asked his mother about it that Mario learned that getting behind the wheel would be a lot more difficult for him than for many other teens: He and the rest of his family, who came from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, were living in the U.S. without documentation. This was news to Mario – he always thought of himself like any of his other classmates: American. “I initially felt really disappointed,” recalls Mario, now 24 years old. “Not with my status, but the fact that I wouldn’t be able to obtain a driver’s license.”
In theory, Mario did have a path to getting a driver’s license and a greater sense of stability in this country: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a 2012 Obama administration policy that extended deportation protections to undocumented immigrants who, like Mario, had been brought to the U.S. by their parents as children.
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