The Trump Administration recently announced the end of DACA (Deffered Action for Childhood Arrivals), a policy that allowed illegal immigrants brought into the country as children to be protected from deportation.

Students, faculty and community leaders took to the University of Oklahoma campus today to offer their support at a rally called “Support the Dream.” The support was offered to the young people protected under DACA, aptly nicknamed “dreamers.”

“The University of Oklahoma doesn’t keep an exact number of dreamers on campus. Which I think is smart, if ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) decided to raid OU they could say ‘we don’t know how many.’ But the estimate is that we have between 80 and 150 dreamers here,” Vanessa Meraz, junior HASA (Hispanic-American Student Association) member said.

While we might not know exactly how many dreamers there are, we do know how DACA has impacted the lives of many students.

“I can say with absolute certainty DACA is the reason I can stand here today and share my story,” Carlos Rubio, OU sophomore and DACA dreamer, said as he addressed the crowd at the Support the Dream Rally.

Unfortunately for many of these dreamers, if there is no legislative solution implemented by March 18th of next year some of them could face deportation.

HASA President Jacob Robbins had this to say about the future of the dreamers, “If you look at it, there are high school students who have spent their whole lives wanting to go to their dream college that are going to get to that point and if nothing’s done, they’re lost. Our generation will be missing out on potential doctors, potential lawyers. And they’ll be missing out on prosperous futures.”