BRENDA PILAR-AYALA

"I entitled this 'Undocumented and Unafraid.' I wrote this a couple years ago as just my form to vent:

‘Desperate for more opportunities and a better quality of life away from poverty, George is determined to pursue the american dream. He migrated to the united states in a work visa in 1986. He was 45 when his visa expired in 2001. Fear of having his visa renewal rejected, George overstayed his visa, and from that point on became undocumented. In 1994 after simultaneously working 2 to 3 jobs for nine years, sleeping less than 5 hours a night, and even riding his bike to and from work in the cold michigan winters, he had successfully saved enough money to legally bring his wife Rosa and their six children under the age of 16 to Michigan so that they too could pursue the American dream.’

"So that’s when my family came, January 25th, 1995, and it was my mom and all of my siblings and I was the youngest. I was 2 months old. And we came to Michigan...

In 1999, my oldest brother got married to an American citizen, and that’s when he gained citizenship, and a couple years later my second oldest brother also married an American citizen, and then he became a resident. And the from that point on, it was 3 of my siblings and I who were still undocumented, along with my parents, but my oldest brother was able to petition for my parents, so in 2010 my dad became a resident and got his green card, and a year later my mom was sent to Mexico to get her green card as well. And that was in 2012.

"For me, I’m still undocumented. We have a mixed status family. My mom’s a citizen, my dad’s a resident, one of my brothers is a citizen, another is a resident, my brother he doesn’t have anything, and then my sister, my other brother and I, we all have DACA."