"My mom agreed to using my whole name,” Brayhan Reveles tells me. The question of whether I could use it had loomed over us since I first started talking to Brayhan about his immigration status.
Brayhan is a high school sophomore and one of the 665,000 immigrants who arrived in the United States as children and now have temporary legal standing under President Obama’s executive order known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
According to a study by the Center for Migration Studies, 85 percent of DACA recipients grew up in this country and more than 90 percent have already graduated from high school here. Ninety-one percent speak English fluently or exclusively. They have family ties and school and work histories in this country, and their plans for the future—for going to college and starting careers or families—begin and end in the United States. But they have only a fragile legal footing here.
