Gabe Cavallaro

Staunton News Leader

STAUNTON - About 45 people filled the steps outside the Augusta County Courthouse in Staunton Friday evening to protest President Donald Trump's announcement this week that he would not continue the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, putting the futures of many previously-protected young immigrants in the U.S. into doubt.

He gave Congress six months to come up legislation to replace the Obama-era immigration program designed to protect undocumented immigrants who were brought into the United States as children, leaving the lives of about 800,000 young immigrants in limbo.

More:Goodlatte: DACA was 'overstep' by Obama, 'right thing' to end it

What does that feel like?

"That's a deadline not only for yourself, but for your dreams," says Dulce Elias Martinez, of Harrisonburg. "It's unfair that so many lives are uncertain."

She graduated from George Mason University this summer and had planned to go to law school, she said, but now she doesn't know what the future holds for her.

Martinez came to the U.S. from Guanajuato, Mexico, at age 3, and has been protected by DACA since she was 16. She feels like the U.S. is the only world she knows — "I'd be going back to a country I don't know."

Nancy Resendiz, of Bridgewater, felt similarly. Now 23, she hasn't lived in Michoacán, Mexico, since she was 7 and said she can't even distinguish what's a memory from that time and what she's invented in her dreams at this point — "I don't even know what Mexico is like anymore."

Finding out now that she might be sent back there has been hard for her to deal with — working at James Madison University with the Migrant Education Program and taking classes there part-time with a dream to become an elementary school teacher, she said she finally felt like she had her life together, but now, she doesn't know what her life will be anymore.

Back in the town she's from in Michoacán, there aren't a lot of jobs to be had, she said, so she doesn't know what she would do if she had to go back with a car loan to finish paying off and no income.

"I'm kind of up in the air right now," she said.

Dealing with that uncertainty is "a pretty weird roller coaster," said Manuel Rey, of Stuarts Draft. He's been planning for the future since he graduated from Robert E. Lee High School — he's someone who started his 401(k) at age 21 — everything he's done is to build toward his future, starting out working a night job at Nibco in Stuarts Draft, and now working at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center.

He dreams of eventually buying a home in Augusta County and starting a family here, so he said it's an awful feeling "when you're working up to something and it can all just get taken away."

Rey came to the U.S. from Paysandú, Uruguay, when he was in the first grade and said he couldn't imagine living, working and starting a family back in Uruguay. He wants to die here, he said — "it's the first place that felt like home since since I left home."

Jennifer Kitchen, of Staunton, organized the rally Friday, saying she wants to show that there are allies here in the community for immigrants protected by DACA — "they can't live with a six-month plan for their lives," she said, referring to Congress's window for coming up with new legislation to replace the program.