Allyson Duarte was good, worked hard, and dreamed of playing soccer at a top US college. But she soon learned talent means nothing when you don’t have papers

She came to America to chase a soccer career only to learn that talent means nothing here when you are undocumented. Now 25-year-old Allyson Duarte sits inside an airport named Reagan, gazing at a city called Washington, and wonders which politicians will ruin her life next.

Through a giant window at Reagan national airport she can see the US Capitol gleaming in the late-day sun. The day before she had been inside under its dome with 1,000 other Dreamers – undocumented high school graduates brought here as children like her – asking Congress to pass a Dream Act that protects high school and college graduates without criminal records.

But as she waits for a flight back to Texas, where she has lived since eighth grade, she worries that supportive words from representatives and senators might not be enough, a legislative solution won’t be reached for Dreamers and he will be shipped back to Mexico.

Profile Who are the Dreamers? Show Hide Dreamers are young immigrants who would qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (Daca) program, enacted under Barack Obama in 2012. Most people in the program entered the US as children and have lived in the US for years “undocumented”. Daca gave them temporary protection from deportation and work permits. Daca was only available to people younger than 31 on 15 June 2012, who arrived in the US before turning 16 and lived there continuously since June 2007. Most Dreamers are from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras and the largest numbers live in California, Texas, Florida and New York. Donald Trump cancelled the program in September but has also said repeatedly he wants Congress to develop a program to “help” the population.

What is the American Dream any more? Once she thought she knew. That was back when she was 13 in Veracruz, Mexico, wanted nothing more than to access the US soccer system, go to college and play professionally. She believed the American Dream all the way through high school in McAllen, Texas, where she had a 3.8 grade point average and an ability to play almost position on the field. She thought those things alone would get her into almost any top soccer school, until she realized those colleges sometimes flew to away matches and because she had no government ID she wouldn’t be able to get on the planes. If she couldn’t fly, she couldn’t play college soccer.

By the time Barack Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012 allowing her to obtain a work permit (that lets her fly) her chance to play college soccer had passed.

“I was this close,” she says, leaning forward in her seat, pinching her thumb and index fingers almost together. “That’s how I started questioning meritocracy and the American Dream. I had to grapple with the problem of not having access to the American Dream.”

Then she slumps back in the chair, sighs heavily and stares in silence at the city that has reduced people like her to a television talking point.

As a child, Duarte loved soccer, playing it every day on the streets outside her parents’ home in Veracruz. She didn’t care the other players were all boys. She could play rough. She could play fast. When she was 12 she joined a local women’s club. The players were all 18 and essentially adults. But playing with them made her realize how good she could be. She was convinced she could play professionally.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Allyson Duarte on the field. Photograph: Allyson Duarte

Her problem was that Veracruz offered few soccer opportunities for a girl. If she really hoped for a soccer career, she realized she’d have to come to the US, play on a big youth team them go to a top college where the professional coaches and scouts would see her. Her father was already in the US, having left when she was eight to find work in McAllen. She longed to join him. When she was 13, he arranged for her to come along with her mother and brother. Three days later she started seventh grade. She knew just three English words: hello, blue and baseball.

She excelled in her new country, quickly learning English. Within weeks, she had made her middle school’s team and joined the top local club team. She went on to McAllen high school, a local girl’s soccer power, where she played well, switching between midfield and attack. She excelled at cross-country. It was not an easy transition, however: many of the girls on the team were white, and she struggled to bond with them. When white team-mate bluntly asked on a bus trip: “Are you a citizen?” She froze, then replied: “I’m a resident.”

“I didn’t want to be exposed,” she says.

Duarte put up with everything for a purpose. She was sure she was doing all the right things to get to a top soccer school. Then, starting her sophomore year, the college coaches started coming. She could tell they were interested by the way they watched her play. But when she talked to them her hopes dropped. They explained that their schools did not give full scholarships to women’s soccer players. They money they could offer would not cover her full tuition. She told them she was undocumented and they told her that because she’d have to fly sometimes it would be hard to offer a scholarship to a player who couldn’t make all the matches.

“They need you full-time if they are going to recruit you,” Duarte says.

She was crushed. When her senior season ended, she quit soccer and deleted her Facebook account cutting all contact from her high school life.

“Since I couldn’t play soccer I went into a deep depression,” she says. “So I just walked away.”

Duarte enrolled into the only school she could afford, a community college, South Texas College, that didn’t have a soccer team. Two years later, she transferred to the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley where she was able to get an academic scholarship. She visited the soccer coach who seemed interested in having her on his team. Though he had already given out his scholarships, he invited her to practice with the hope she could play the next year.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest At McAllen high school, Allyson also excelled at cross-country. Photograph: Allyson Duarte

Her skills had eroded, though. Those two years away had robbed her of speed and agility. The coach had brought in several players from Europe and she couldn’t help but see irony in the fact that someone who had never lived in the US before could have an opportunity that she – a resident for almost 10 years at the time – could not. After a few days she stopped coming to the practices.

Her love for soccer had disappeared.

‘It’s extremely heartbreaking when you hear stories like this,” Doug Andreassen, head of the US Soccer’s Diversity Task Force, when recently told abut Duarte’s plight. “It happens a lot and there’s nobody there to help them. There’s nobody at the colleges to help them.”

Andreassen says he talks to many young players like Duarte, undocumented teenagers with great skill who have come to the US from soccer-playing countries and have visions of going to American colleges. He tries to be honest when he meets them, explaining that their immigration status might be an impediment though doing so can be difficult.

“I don’t want to crush their dreams but I have to be realistic,” he says. “I don’t want to send them down the path to disappointment later on.”

He desperately wants the system to change.

Duarte does too, though she has a new passion. Philosophers move her the way soccer once did. She loves the writings of John Rawls, Gloria Evangelina Anzaldùa and Enrique Domingo Dussel – people who challenged the ideas of justice, classism and imperialism. She discovered her dream had changed. She wants to go to graduate school where she can develop her beliefs. She has chosen the two schools to which she wants to apply most: Penn State and City University of New York Graduate Center.

But once again she is held back, this time because her work permit expires next fall. If Donald Trump has his way and Daca is cancelled, she worries she will be sent back to Mexico and won’t be able to complete her graduate program. This reality has made her an activist – a Dreamer determined to not lose two dreams before she turns 26.

“I should be on the Mexican national team now,” she says. “But one of the things I’ve learned is you have to enjoy the moment. You can’t put it all on one thing. You have to keep moving.”

She gazes once more at the Capitol, now a blazing white in the fading afternoon. In the background, the airport PA announces gate changes and boarding times. She doesn’t seem to hear. Instead she stares through the glass wondering if the people in Congress understand what already she has lost and what more she has to lose. A bigger question might be: do they even care about the American Dream?

Whatever it is.