Denisse Rojas arrived in the United States when she was just 10 months old, brought here from Mexico as an undocumented immigrant to find a better life.

This young woman is the human face of a federal program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This program temporarily halts the threat of deportation for young people who arrived before their 16th birthday and provides them with a work permit and documents needed to enroll in college.

Rojas’ family is similar to many undocumented families. After they arrived in Fremont, her father worked full-time in a restaurant while pursuing his high-school diploma at night. Her mother attended community college part-time for seven years to earn her nursing degree.

Rojas excelled in high school and attended UC Berkeley to study biology. She worked as a waitress and commuted an hour each way to classes because she couldn’t afford to live near campus. After graduation, she volunteered at San Francisco General Hospital.

Rojas dreamed of going to medical school, driven in part by a family member’s early death from cancer. The disease was diagnosed at a late stage because the family’s immigration status made it impossible to afford health insurance.

Today, Rojas is enrolled at the New York’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai where she’s on track to earn her degree in 2019. She intends to specialize in emergency medicine and work in low-income communities to provide health care to families like her own that would otherwise go without necessary treatment.

The deferred action program offers opportunities to many thousands of students like Rojas, young people who have only known the United States as their home. These young people are fiercely patriotic. They are undocumented through no choice of their own. They were educated here, they work here and they contribute to communities across America. They want to feel accepted and integrated into American society.

Around 750,000 young people nationwide have been admitted to the program and 359,000 of these so-called Dreamers — nearly half — live, work and are educated in California. Each participant in the program had to submit an application to the Department of Homeland Security and undergo a vetting process to ensure they were qualified.

But during his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump threatened to immediately rescind the deferred action program. That threat is compounded by the fact that registering for the program meant millions of Dreamers trusted the government with their addresses, family details and other personal information.

The fear that Dreamers and their families can be targeted for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement is real.

My office has received more than 33,000 calls and emails from Californians afraid of how minorities, including Dreamers and undocumented immigrants, will be treated under a Trump administration.

A professor from the University of San Francisco shared that after election day a student sobbed in her arms. A father from Pasadena expressed his fear that his two adoptive sons would be deported. A wife from Forest Lake (Orange County) feared that her husband’s temporary status would be revoked and their family separated.

This is unacceptable and not the America I know.

Upon his election, President-elect Trump said he wants to be the president for all Americans. Unequivocally stating that he will not overturn the deferred action program and target Dreamers like Rojas for deportation would send a strong message that he’s serious about turning the page from the toxic campaign rhetoric to governing the nation.

In the event that President-elect Trump does not change course, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has committed to introducing legislation with Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to extend deferred action status.

I intend to join that effort to protect the more than 350,000 law-abiding young people who are living, working and being educated in the state of California. We have a moral obligation to do all we can to shield them from deportation and keep their families together.

Dianne Feinstein represents California in the U.S. Senate.