Edgar Samudio appeared to speak confidently alongside a panel of Stony Brook University professors and representatives of local community organizations at a “DACA Teach-In,” on Wednesday, Sept. 20 in the Humanities Building. The event, organized by the Humanities Institute, was directed at combating the reversal of the Obama-era initiative, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

“When I came here with my family, I got on a plane; I didn’t know what it meant to be undocumented,” Samudio, a Stony Brook alumnus, said. “I didn’t know what a social security number was. I just knew that we had to move.”

DACA was enacted in 2012 under an executive order by the Obama administration, after Congress failed to reach a decision over the DREAM Act — a proposal designed to set up a multi-step process for undocumented minors, with the goal of having them reach conditional residency, and then after many qualifications, permanent residency. Instead, DACA took its place and allowed undocumented people brought into the United States as children to temporarily work, study and stay in the country.

Currently, President Trump is giving Congress a six-month grace period to pass a law that would take DACA’s place. Democrats are likely to prefer a law that would grant dreamers (those protected by the DREAM Act) additional privileges, such as the rights to vote and receive government funding, or one that would create a path to citizenship, while Republicans are likely to favor more restrictive legislation.

Recently, President Trump met with Democratic congressional leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, during which the three reportedly arrived at a deal on the matter. According to the Department of Homeland Security, however, the program is still set to end March 5, 2018.

Samudio’s immigration story is one shared by nearly 800,000 people, all of whom came to the United States at young ages and became DACA recipients early on.

“When it came time for me to get a driver’s license or get a part-time job, I learned that those were not things I was able to do,” Samudio said.

Abilities like obtaining a driver’s license, working legally and receiving financial aid in the United States are not available to DACA recipients.

Minerva Perez of the Organización Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island pointed out at the teach-in that being undocumented in a setting like Long Island is much different than being undocumented in a metropolitan area like New York City.

“People have been oppressed, fearful and certainly keeping themselves in the shadows to not draw any positive or negative attention,” she said.

She continued on to make a connection between being undocumented, living somewhere rural like the east end of Long Island and being racially profiled.

“There is hyper-vigilance on cracking down on people driving without a license,” Perez said. “We know it does not take much to put an undocumented person in detention or detain them.”

She also pointed out that in suburban areas, completing life’s day-to-day responsibilities requires the ability to drive, due to limited public transportation options.

Members of the panel, including Lori Flores of the history department and Nancy Hiemstra of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department at Stony Brook University, delved into myths and facts pertaining to the program, including the many misconceptions that exist about DACA recipients.

David Clark, a junior applied mathematics and statistics major, is working diligently among Stony Brook students to help the organization gain recognition on campus. Although Long Island Immigrant Student Activists is not officially an on-campus organization, its members have been active on campus since last March, when DACA was first believed to be under threat.In the meantime, they say they want dreamers to know that privacy laws like the Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), which protects the privacy of student education records, apply to them too.

Currently, LIISA representatives are working to update their original document of demands, which they said they want university officials to read and support.