If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Trump administration, the future for teachers like Vicente Rodriguez and some 660,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, would be in doubt.

"I made it my life's mission to make sure students would never, ever experience such events and hardship in pursuit of education as I did," he said to thousands of people gathered in front of the steps of the high court Tuesday as the justices began considering the Trump administration's efforts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA.

Rodriguez, who is a teaching assistant and DACA recipient from San Bernardino, California, is one of an estimated 20,000 teachers, assistant teachers and those in the process of being certified to become teachers who are protected under DACA in school districts all across the country.

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"I aspire to be the source that tells my students that college and higher education are truly achievable, that high school is not the end of their academic career," said Rodriguez, who works with students with disabilities and is in the process of earning his master's degree.

As the Supreme Court justices consider whether the Trump administration has the authority to repeal the Obama-era protection , school officials in communities across California, Texas, Arizona, New York and other places with large immigrant populations are bracing for the potential exodus of teachers like Rodriguez, who they've come to depend on to provide comfort, empathy and stability to students whose lives have been upended by the intensified anti-immigration agenda.

"For me, against all the odds to get to become a teacher, it's doable," Rodriguez says in an interview after his speech. "I want to be a source that motivates them, that empowers them and at the same time help their world become a little bit better."

The court's opinion is expected next year, and should the justices side with the Trump administration, allowing it to dismantle the program, recipients could be at risk of deportation.

In an amicus brief filed in October by the National Education Association, the 3.2 million member teachers union argued that the deportation of DACA recipients would send schools into a tailspin as some 9,000 teachers in the classroom today would abruptly disappear and the thousands of additional DACA recipients working toward certification to help fill teacher shortages in hard-to-staff schools, like those with lots of bilingual students, would no longer be available.

"Without DACA renewals, the status of thousands of educators will expire on different dates throughout the school year," the brief reads. "Teachers and staff will abruptly disappear from classrooms to the distress of their students and to the measurable detriment of educational outcomes. In addition, educational institutions across the country rely on thousands of DACA educators to help remedy significant teacher shortages, provide mentorship and role models to students, and diversify the teaching corps."

If that happens, Rodriguez says, there wouldn't be many teachers in San Bernadino who look like the students they teach.

"There wouldn't be teachers who look a lot like them," he said. "How would they find that connection with a teacher? They don't share the same cultural values. How will teachers make that connection?"

For Karina Alvarez, a second-grade teacher at Edgewood Independent School District, just outside San Antonio in Texas, being forced from her classroom wasn't just a possibility. While awaiting the delayed renewal of her DACA work permit, she was forced to temporarily resign.

Alvarez, who work with students who are learning English, was inside the Supreme Court for the arguments Tuesday. She spoke to the crowd after about what the administration's anti-immigration agenda signals to the students she teaches.

"I remember their faces the next day and it was sad seeing them," she said about the day after the 2016 presidential election that sent Trump to the White House. "They knew. They heard conversations at home. One of my students said, 'Will I have to go back to Mexico, because the leader of this country doesn't like Mexico.'"

The Trump administration ended the DACA program in September 2017, but a number of federal judges have blocked the action. The White House argues that its decision to end the program is not reviewable by the courts and even if it was, DACA itself was a breach of authority by the previous administration and is unconstitutional.

"Politicians like President Barack Obama, and before him Republicans and Democrats alike, understood that immigration is the heartbeat of america," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who joined the throngs of people outside the Supreme Court Tuesday. "We have to get back to that place. But in the interim, in the meantime, we have to use every bit of power we can, including the courts, to try to create fairness for DACA recipients."

The AFT represents thousands of teachers and nurses who are DACA recipients, she said.

"What I do need to say to the president of the United States, to those in Congress who have no heart, is that we will fight to make sure this country finds its heart again, finds its soul again," she said. "Our country has been a country of immigrants. The educators of this country will say that over and over again."