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I was 13 when I realized fear could control your whole life or shape your fight.
That was the age I understood what being undocumented really meant: watching my parents freeze up when a cop drove by. Holding my breath, knowing one wrong move could shatter our whole world. It meant living in the shadows, quiet, careful, and invisible.
But I also learned that fear doesn’t have to shrink you. It can sharpen you. It can turn into power when we speak up, when we organize, and when we refuse to disappear.
That’s why I wrote my book, Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear into Pride, Power, and Real Change.
It’s the story of a girl who was uprooted from home and whose parents risked it all to seek a better life in the U.S. But it’s also the story of the movement that changed the political landscape of this country: a movement led by immigrant youth who were never supposed to have a voice. And yet, we built one so loud the country couldn’t ignore us.
I graduated from college in 2007, before the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy was put into place — before any protections existed for people like me. I had worked so hard to get that degree, believing it would open doors. But all I felt on graduation day was fear. No job. No papers. No safety net. I didn’t know what was next. I was overtaken by anxiety and uncertainty. But I knew I wasn’t alone.
Now, almost two decades later, we’re in a moment where students, especially immigrant, undocumented, and first-gen students, are stepping into a world that feels like it’s unraveling. They’re graduating into headlines filled with cruelty: white South Africans being fast-tracked for immigration while Black and brown asylum seekers are turned away. People being deported even after a court ruled they should be allowed to stay. Federal agents detaining a graduating student at her college. At. Her. College.
But I’ve spent my life organizing with young people, and here’s what I know: they’re not waiting around for justice. They’re building it.
That’s what Dreaming of Home is about. It’s a memoir, yes, but it’s also a blueprint. It’s for anyone who’s ever been told they don’t belong. Anyone who's ever felt invisible. Anyone who’s tired of playing small just to make other people comfortable.
This book is about turning fear into action, and turning that action into something unstoppable.
I see a lot of my own experience in the eyes of graduates today. So, because it’s graduation season, I want to share an excerpt from Chapter 10 of my book. I hope it meets you where you are. I hope it helps you feel less alone. And I hope it reminds you that you are the power, not tomorrow, but right now.
I had hoped that by the time I graduated, this country would have deemed me and my family worthy of immigration papers, but here we are, still undocumented. As an undergraduate, I am haunted by the thought of having a college degree without the ability to work and put my degree to use. I try not to think about it to avoid torturing myself, but as commencement gets closer, I am forced to face the hard reality: I’ll be an undocumented college graduate with no future. The fact remains that my family and I could be deported any minute. It doesn’t matter that I am a “good” immigrant graduating cum laude with awards for my student leadership and community engagement. I’ve heard similar things from lots of marginalized people (immigrants, people of color, and queer folk alike)—that somehow, we can “hard work” our way out of systems of oppression, but that just isn’t the way things are.
My friends feel accomplished and are excited to join the real world, find a job, and move out to live on their own. Although some of them are going to law or graduate school, we talk about feeling relief that there are no more books to read and papers due. No more midterms and finals to keep us up late in the library. I’m bogged down with mixed feelings. I’m proud to be the first one in my family to graduate from college. But I’m heartbroken that I can’t put my degree to use, and in the days leading up to graduation, I have a full-on panic attack. I’m lying down in my bed in the living room of our studio apartment. I think about my parents’ sacrifices. I think about all those years working at the supermarket, selling Avon, and cleaning houses with Mami to help pay for tuition, books, and my MetroCard, and I ask myself, For what? What was the point? I cry uncontrollably. My heart is racing, and I have a hard time breathing.
Even though I’ve found a lot of new personal power through my organizing experiences, I’ve found a new community of immigrant youth, and I have a new chosen family with Walter and my friends, in this moment I feel completely alone. I think sometimes there is an expectation that empowerment is like a switch that gets flipped, like suddenly you aren’t ashamed or alone and the story comes to a quick, happy ending. But my journey isn’t like that.
Mami tries to calm me down. She brings me water and holds me in her arms until I can finally speak. “Por qué lloras, mijita?” she asks me. I want to keep this pain away from her. I don’t want her to have one more thing to worry about. I know all the sacrifices she is making for me and our family. Mami is working three jobs: she cleans homes, sells Avon, and works at a nail salon five days a week for ten hours for sixty dollars a day. She is constantly mistreated by her bosses, who tell her to work more hours without pay, force her to work faster, and threaten to fire or expose her. And yet every morning she gets up to prepare our meals before she goes to work. And she comes home late at night exhausted, with her arms and hands in pain.
But I can no longer hold my despair alone, and I tell her how I’m feeling. Mami helps me lie down and asks me to take deep breaths. She tenderly rubs my legs and feet while telling me she is proud of me. She reminisces about being a young woman working while also trying to graduate from high school in Ecuador, dreaming of going to college and becoming a teacher but having to give up on this dream because she didn’t have the means. Mami reminds me that graduating from college is a historic accomplishment in my family lineage, breaking a generational cycle of denied access to higher education. “Regardless of your immigration status, nobody can take your education away,” she says. She insists that I must have faith; God will find a way for us to get immigration papers. “Ten fe, mija.” I want to believe that she is right as I finally drift off to sleep.
A few days before commencement, I get a call from Judith Torrea, a reporter from El Diario, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in New York. She wants to interview undocumented students graduating from college. We meet for an interview at a café in Chelsea, and she asks if I would be comfortable being interviewed for a front-page article about me. Her question opens my eyes to see this moment in a new light. I’ve been so clouded with feelings of hopelessness about my future that I had not realized the opportunity I have to use my graduation story to inspire other immigrant youth—just like those young people who shared their stories years before inspired me. I feel I have nothing to lose. In community-organizing training, I learn that keeping a drumbeat about our stories in the media and exposing the injustice that undocumented students and families face help our movement empower undocumented communities and allies, reach more people, raise awareness, and spark a conversation about the contradictions between the values that the country professes and how it treats communities of color.
On commencement day, Judith and a photography and video crew from El Diario come to our family apartment early in the morning. They plan to follow me throughout the day to take pictures and interview my family, friends, and commencement speakers for the story. My parents don’t want their pictures taken but agree to be interviewed. The hope that sharing their stories will add to the movement’s efforts to change the laws gives them the courage to join me in speaking up and using this painful moment for our family to push for change. Judith and I agree that I will be the only person from my family being photographed to mitigate the risk of my parents and brother being targeted for deportation.
Mami welcomes Judith with a cafecito and invites her and her team to join us at the table for breakfast. Mami and Papi drink their coffee standing up because we can’t all fit at our small table. Our dining area turns into an obstacle course crammed with humans and photography equipment. My parents are nervous, but Judith breaks the ice by sharing the story of her journey to the US from Spain. Soon, I realize we are running late. I hastily leave the dining table to begin packing my cap and gown. The photographer takes pictures of my every move. At first, I feel exposed and uncomfortable. I have become used to being interviewed and photographed by reporters at public events, press conferences, and protests, but this is the first time I’ll be exposing my small apartment and my family to the media. As I pack and put my shoes on, I keep my head down, wanting to hide. But I find ease in hearing my parents and Judith share stories and laughter. I am reminded that in speaking up, I reclaim my humanity and, in the process, inspire others, including my own parents, to reclaim theirs. We are human. We have the right to feel feelings, to exist, and to live with dignity.
An Excerpt from: From Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear into Pride, Power, and Real Change by Cristina Jiménez, on sale May 27, 2025
