Rosario Reyes, 38, an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant from El Sal­vador, had been stand­ing on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court with her Amer­i­can-born, 7‑year-old son Vic­tor since 4 a.m. in the pour­ing rain. They were drenched. At around 10:30 a.m., the skies cleared and the Court’s nine-word deci­sion came down: ​“The judg­ment is affirmed by an equal­ly divid­ed court.” When she heard the words, Reyes wept.

“My baby was crying for me,” she says. “Just leaving [them] like that, not knowing what would happen, not knowing if I would ever see them again.”

A year and a half ear­li­er, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma promised Reyes and mil­lions of oth­er unau­tho­rized immi­grants, ​“If you meet the cri­te­ria, you can come out of the shad­ows.” The June 23 deci­sion halt­ed the two pro­grams meant to real­ize that promise: Deferred Action for Par­ents of Amer­i­cans (DAPA) and an expan­sion of the 2012 Deferred Action for Child­hood Arrivals (DACA+).

DAPA applied to par­ents who had arrived pri­or to 2010 and whose chil­dren were U.S. cit­i­zens or law­ful per­ma­nent res­i­dents. They could apply for tem­po­rary relief from depor­ta­tion and a three-year work per­mit. Accord­ing to the Migra­tion Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, as many as 3.6 mil­lion unau­tho­rized immi­grants would be eligible.

Oba­ma also expand­ed DACA, a 2012 pol­i­cy that let chil­dren who entered the U.S. before June 2007 apply for a two-year relief from depor­ta­tion and work per­mit. Under the expan­sion, expect­ed to ben­e­fit rough­ly 290,000 chil­dren, the new cut-off would be Jan­u­ary 2010 and the relief peri­od would increase to three years.

Oba­ma had turned to these exec­u­tive actions in frus­tra­tion. He’d pledged to seek com­pre­hen­sive reform of what he termed a ​“bro­ken immi­gra­tion sys­tem” dur­ing his sec­ond term. But when a surge of unac­com­pa­nied minors began arriv­ing at the U.S.-Mexico bor­der in 2014, House Repub­li­cans accused Oba­ma of lax bor­der enforce­ment and repeat­ed­ly blocked an immi­gra­tion bill passed by the Sen­ate. In response, in Novem­ber 2014, Oba­ma announced DAPA and DACA+.

The actions nev­er went into effect. Texas and 25 oth­er states imme­di­ate­ly chal­lenged them, and the Fifth Cir­cuit Court of Appeals — whose rul­ing the Supreme Court affirmed — held that Oba­ma had overreached.

Now, Reyes and oth­ers hop­ing to file for DAPA pro­tec­tion must wait for the out­come of a Hail Mary: On July 18, the Depart­ment of Jus­tice filed a peti­tion for the Supreme Court to rehear the case when it has nine jus­tices. In the unusu­al event that the court takes up the peti­tion, the process could take anoth­er two years or more.

Vic­tor and his broth­er Ricar­do, 18, who live with their moth­er in Mary­land, now fear for her. ​“They pray all day,” Reyes says, and are ​“always crying.”

“They ask me, ​‘What are we going to do if you are not with us and you get deport­ed? What will hap­pen to us?’ ”

Of felons and families

Obama’s role in this sto­ry is not as straight­for­ward as it sounds. He is not sim­ply a cham­pi­on of immi­grant rights thwart­ed by Con­gress and the courts.

Obama’s use of exec­u­tive author­i­ty was selec­tive: While he attempt­ed to help some immi­grant moth­ers and chil­dren, he aggres­sive­ly pur­sued others.

The pres­i­dent said his plan would pri­or­i­tize ​“felons, not fam­i­lies. Crim­i­nals, not chil­dren. Gang mem­bers, not a mom who’s work­ing hard to pro­vide for her kids.” But the 2014 pol­i­cy makes moth­ers and chil­dren who arrived after Jan­u­ary 2014 a pri­or­i­ty for depor­ta­tion. While DAPA and DACA+ were enjoined, the depor­ta­tions went on.

In Jan­u­ary of this year, and again in May and June, Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment (ICE) ramped up raids tar­get­ing recent­ly arrived Cen­tral Amer­i­can women and chil­dren. Immi­grants were picked up in church­es and schools.

Around 7:30 a.m. on June 7, Leti­cia (who pre­ferred to give only her first name) received a phone call at work from her hus­band. Four ICE agents had appre­hend­ed her daugh­ter, Yos­se­lyn, at the bus stop.

Yos­se­lyn, 19, had come from El Sal­vador two years ear­li­er on foot. No longer a minor, she is inel­i­gi­ble for DACA or DACA+ because she arrived after 2010.

Leti­cia raced home, but by the time she arrived, her daugh­ter was gone; Yos­se­lyn had been hand­cuffed, tak­en into cus­tody and placed in a Geor­gia deten­tion cen­ter. She is cur­rent­ly in removal proceedings.

Many see this con­tra­dic­to­ry approach to raids and relief as the crux of Obama’s immi­gra­tion lega­cy. ​“Oba­ma hides under this blan­ket of his exec­u­tive action,” says Luba Cortés, an immi­grant youth orga­niz­er at Make the Road New York whose moth­er would have been eli­gi­ble for DAPA. ​“How can you be push­ing this exec­u­tive action and [at the same time] give the green light on raids?”

No place like home

Jacqui Moreno arrived in Texas from Kenya on a stu­dent visa 16 years ago. She over­stayed her visa after she com­plet­ed her nurs­ing degree, fear­ing vio­lence in Kenya that had tar­get­ed her fam­i­ly. Today, she has four Amer­i­can chil­dren and a nat­u­ral­ized hus­band from Belize, but has been unable to obtain legal sta­tus. She hoped DAPA would help.

Moreno had nev­er had an encounter with law enforce­ment until the morn­ing of Oct. 8, 2015, when an ICE agent and two offi­cials dressed in civil­ian cloth­ing swarmed her home in Plano, Texas, as she was tak­ing her two eldest chil­dren to school. In the com­mo­tion, the two old­er chil­dren were able to leave for school with their father, but her two youngest, ages 2 and 5, stayed behind with an uncle. They looked on as Moreno was hand­cuffed and tak­en away.

“My baby was cry­ing for me,” she says. ​“Just leav­ing [them] like that, not know­ing what would hap­pen, not know­ing if I would ever see them again” left her frozen. She was placed in a cell and lat­er that day released on bond, but is now in removal pro­ceed­ings. When she heard the Court’s deci­sion on DAPA, which she had hoped might pro­vide her a way out, she was in tears. ​“I don’t know what route to take after that,” she says.

Isabel Aguilar is anoth­er immi­grant moth­er with an uncer­tain fate.

After a para­mil­i­tary group in Hon­duras killed her nephew in 2003, they threat­ened the fam­i­ly: ​“Don’t inves­ti­gate this. … You could be next.” Fear­ing for her safe­ty, Isabel packed up her life in Hon­duras, where she was an attor­ney, and fled to the Unit­ed States with her hus­band and 1‑year-old. She thought things would calm down in Hon­duras with­in a year. But the sit­u­a­tion only wors­ened. That was 13 years ago.

When Aguilar’s visa expired in 2013, she was told by legal coun­sel that it was too late for her to make an asy­lum claim. So she stayed with­out papers.

She has two U.S.-born chil­dren and would have been eli­gi­ble for DAPA. Instead, she fears her fam­i­ly may share the fate of sev­er­al oth­ers from her com­mu­ni­ty of Owings Mills, a sub­urb of Bal­ti­more. In at least three cas­es, she says, chil­dren were left with­out one or more par­ents after ICE detained or deport­ed them.

Some chil­dren of deport­ed par­ents can stay with extend­ed fam­i­ly; oth­ers have no one. A year­long inves­ti­ga­tion pub­lished in 2011 by the Applied Research Cen­ter found that thou­sands of chil­dren whose par­ents were detained or deport­ed end­ed up in fos­ter homes.

“Chil­dren are being left behind,” Aguilar says. ​“This is a pres­i­dent who is sup­posed to sup­port us.”

Nor is the immi­gra­tion rhetoric in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion giv­ing her much con­fi­dence. Her 14-year-old son’s class­mates tell him, ​“You should be ready with your lug­gage when Don­ald Trump arrives. … You should be ready to leave for Honduras.”

“I am afraid,” she says. ​“My chil­dren have Lati­no faces.”

In the mean­time, even under a sup­pos­ed­ly immi­grant-friend­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent, fam­i­lies remain torn apart.

When Rosario Reyes fled gang vio­lence in El Sal­vador 12 years ago, she left behind her younger son, José Ramón, unsure whether she could trav­el safe­ly with a 3‑year-old.

She has not seen him since, but she knows him well. Every after­noon, she checks his home­work over Skype, and they chat fre­quent­ly through What­sApp. ​“I will see you soon,” she had been telling him before the Supreme Court decision.

Reyes was plan­ning to spon­sor José Ramón through the Cen­tral Amer­i­can Minors Refugee Pro­gram, which pro­vides safe pas­sage to the U.S. bor­der. That pro­gram, how­ev­er, requires Reyes to be law­ful­ly present in the Unit­ed States. After the Supreme Court’s dead­lock dashed her plans to apply for DAPA relief, she sees no way to reunite her fam­i­ly any­time soon.

In These Times was able to con­nect with these fam­i­lies in part with the help of the Unit­ed We Dream MigraWatch hot­line and CASA. ​