Silent auction of portraits to benefit organizations working with undocumented immigrants
Heldáy de la Cruz came to the U.S. from Jalisco, Mexico, when he was just 2 years old. He learned English at the age of 5. It wasn’t until he was 15 when his undocumented status really hit him for the first time. He wanted to learn how to drive, but he couldn’t get his permit.
“That was the first wall I hit,” de la Cruz said.
An artist and aspiring designer, he worked hard in high school, hoping for private scholarships, since undocumented immigrants do not qualify for federal aid. He received a scholarship for the University of Portland. But because he couldn’t take out a federal loan to pay for the rest, he had to turn it down.
“As a DACA recipient, you work your ass off in high school hoping to get something, some sort of aid,” de la Cruz said. “And I had to turn (the scholoarship) down. That was a real bummer for me, having to face all these realities – these walls that I kept hitting.”
When the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, was enacted in 2012, he was nervous to apply. DACA is a program established by the Obama administration granting temporary protection against deportation to some undocumented immigrants who entered the country as minors. DACA can be renewed when it expires every two years and allows recipients to qualify for a work permit.
“I just felt like it was a really great achievement, but it was also really scary to have to come clean and give the government your fingerprints and your address,” he said. “Eventually I did it, my parents convinced me to, and I’m really glad that I did. It was life-changing. I was able to live normally.”
Since becoming a DACA recipient, de la Cruz went to school at PCC for graphic design, and got his dream job at Ecotrust as a graphic designer.
This September, however, the Trump administration issued a deadline to rescind DACA, which would strip protection against deportation from almost 800,000 people. The implementation of the repeal has been postponed for six months to allow Congress to make a plan to address the current DACA recipient population.
As a response, and in support of DACA, de la Cruz is hosting an art show Dec. 1 called "We The Dreamers," which will feature his own illustrations of 10 DACA recipients, along with their stories.
The event will also include a silent auction, speeches, a special musical guest, a DJ, a bar and an afterparty. Proceeds from the event will benefit organizations working to support undocumented immigrants on the national, state and local levels — respectively United We Dream, Oregon DACA Coalition and Pueblo Unido.
“We live in secret for so much of our lives about all of that, we don’t talk about it. It’s a scary thing to do,” de la Cruz said. “But then we’re given this sort of gift (with DACA), and this really amazing thing that changes your life drastically.
“And then to have that just taken away again is really frustrating. And I personally feel like I have just lived that secret life for so long, and I don’t want to go back to that; there’s nothing there for me anymore. I feel really empowered by DACA, and I want to stand up for it. I’m the right person to fight for it. DACA recipients are the right people to talk to.”
FURTHER READING: These Oregon ‘Dreamers’ beat the odds
Alex Vallé, another DACA recipient who will be the subject of one of de la Cruz’s illustrations for the event, came to the U.S. when he was 7 or 8. He fell in love with art in middle school and took all the art classes he could in high school. He graduated from Madison High School class of 2014 with a 3.5 G.P.A., 11 extra credits, and four college credits.
He had to decline a full-ride scholarship to University of Oregon’s design program because as an undocumented immigrant, even with DACA status, he could not receive federal aid.
High school, Vallé said, was the hardest time of his life.
“From my perspective it was just like, ‘you’re from here, I’m from here.’ I didn’t know what it meant,” he said of being an undocumented child. “I didn’t think ‘because you’re from here, you get this, I don’t get this.’ I never saw it that way until I understood how things worked, how FAFSA, how funds, how money worked.”
He said many people he knew dropped out or didn’t pursue education after high school when they faced similar roadblocks. But he chose to keep going. He enrolled in Portland Community College’s architecture program, and then switched to graphic design, going to school full-time as well as working full-time.
Currently, he is taking a break from school to focus on making art. He’s now experimenting in inverted colors, optical illusions, and T-shirt designs. He is also making an art piece for the silent auction portion of the "We The Dreamers" event, and planned to create it with DACA in mind.
“I feel like that’s the hardest part because DACA brings out everything,” Vallé said. “When I got it I was super excited, I was like – this is the solution. I could represent it that way. Or I could also represent it where it’s like, I have DACA, but it limits me too; it’s like being in a little box.’”
DACA is an important part of the conversation about immigration in the U.S., but Pueblo Unido, the local organization receiving donations from the event, wants people to remember that it is only one part of that conversation.
“I know that everyone is going (to the event) to support DACA because DACA has been in the news a lot lately, but my hope – and I know a lot of people in Pueblo Unido share this same hope – is that people will realize that there are a lot of undocumented people,” said Vianca Diaz Cea, a member of Pueblo Unido’s leadership team. “There are people who didn’t qualify for DACA. There are people whose birthday was one day past the cutoff, and there are the parents of DACA recipients, because usually if you have a DACA recipient, you’re going to have more undocumented people in the family.”
Pueblo Unido was founded in April by Francisco Rodriguez and Cameron Coval, its co-executive directors. Rodriguez, a DACA recipient himself as well as a community activist, was detained earlier this year when ICE arrested him at his home without a warrant, citing a misdemeanor DUI as the reason, despite Rodriguez having already completed a DUI diversion program.
Juan Rogel of Milenio and Father Roberto Maldonado organized a rally of about 100 people to protest his arrest and the community gathered around him. Local organizations Latino Network, Causa and Unite Oregon all reached out to their networks and flooded the ICE phone lines until he was released. This sparked the idea for Pueblo Unido.
Rodriguez and Coval "wanted to extend that support to other people, because they were very well aware that without that support, Francisco would’ve stayed in detention,” Diaz Cea said.
Pueblo Unido supports and empowers the families of undocumented immigrants who have been detained, coordinating rental assistance, food pantry access and legal support and helping pay legal fees. Diaz Cea explained that often it is the breadwinner who is detained, leaving the family in need of financial support.
“We’re really hoping that this support won’t stop with DACA,” Diaz Cea said. “We’re hoping that people will realize that being undocumented is normal, and that being undocumented won’t be so stigmatized. It’s hard to talk about, but people have been living here undocumented a really long time. We just want to get the word out there that it’s awesome that people care about DACA recipients right now, but we need to extend that support to all undocumented people.
“There’s a narrative of deserving and non-deserving immigrant, and we really want to crush that, and hopefully this event will help do that.”
If you go
What: "We The Dreamers: An Art Show to Defend DACA."
When: 7:30-11 p.m. Dec. 1; 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Dec. 2
Where: Ecotrust Building, 721 NW Ninth Ave. No. 200, Portland
Tickets: Eventbrite
(After party at NYX, $10 at the door)
