President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that in 2018 he will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, commonly known as DACA, has thrown doubt on the futures of nearly 800,000 people covered by the executive order, which allows some unauthorized immigrants whose parents brought them to the United States as children to obtain work permits in the U.S.
This policy reversal has hit one Rush biomedical researcher close to home. Yuriana Aguilar, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow and instructor in the Rush Medical College Department of Physiology & Biophysics. She also has a work permit thanks to DACA.
“I will try to keep it positive during the next six months, but we’re kind of in limbo,” she says of herself and her family. “We’re not too sure what’s going to happen.”
Aguilar’s work permit expires in a year, and she continues to conduct research within the constraints of the new political landscape — one that seems to change daily regarding DACA, with shifting statements from the Trump administration and a raft of lawsuits in the wake of the president’s announcement.
Aguilar examines cardiac functioning on the cellular level. She’s studying proteins that regulate calcium signaling, which is critical for contraction and electrical functions in the heart. Seeing how this process works in a normal heart can help her detect differences in an unhealthy one.
It’s taken incredible courage and hard work to get where she is — qualities Aguilar says she learned from her parents, who brought her to California from Mexico when she was 5 years old.
Now 27, she is taking on roles rare for scientists: spokesperson, advocate and inspiration for others who, like her, wish to contribute to science but may feel obstructed because of ethnicity, gender or citizenship.
A ‘very shy person’ thrust into the spotlight
"I'm a very shy person,” Aguilar says. “I never thought I would be in a situation where I would have to speak in the name of other undocumented immigrants. But I think it would be cowardly to say 'I'm not talking anymore' or 'I'm too scared I'm going to hide now.'"
Since the DACA development, Aguilar has granted interviews to web, print and TV outlets, sharing her story as an example of what one immigrant can do to contribute to public health. In August, she joined other undocumented immigrants in sharing their stories with U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL 5th District), and she has participated in other events with state legislators.
Her turn in activism began in March, when Aguilar attended President Trump’s first address to Congress. Invited by U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (CA) and Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the granddaughter of legendary activist Cesar Chavez, Aguilar helped represent thousands of people who, like her, were aided by DACA and state legislation such as the California DREAM Act.
Aguilar called the experience in Washington “amazing,” but she could also see the hardened division in the congressional chamber. That divisiveness could have a significant impact on the lives of many people in her situation.
Overcoming limitations
Aguilar’s family settled in Fresno in California’s Central Valley. There were five children and her parents, who are small crop farmers and also raise livestock.
None of the kids she grew up with talked much about their backgrounds, says Aguilar. But things began to change as college approached.
"Up until twelfth grade there was no difference between myself and the other kids,” she says. “We didn't realize that there was a distinction. I didn't have a social security number, and the others did. I was going to be limited in terms of financial aid for the university, and maybe others didn't. And I was not going to qualify for grants like others did."
Despite these limitations, Aguilar was accepted to the University of California, Merced. It was there her love of science was first sparked.
The UC system ran an extracurricular program aimed at undergraduate students interested in science, and despite it only being open to U.S. citizens and resident aliens, Aguilar was admitted. She’d heard science was a good field and was considering medical school.
Aguilar completed a summer research project at UC Davis, studying atherosclerosis of the heart, and it became clear then what her focus should be.
Following a DREAM
But where a hard-working student could normally look forward to a clear path to a PhD, Aguilar would have to face far more uncertainty.
As an undocumented immigrant, she had little financial assistance for her undergraduate studies, paying with help from her parents, her own work and what few scholarships were available. She was thankful to benefit from legislation that the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM Act, which became law in 2011 and allows undocumented students from California to pay in-state tuition rates. Illinois and 16 other states have passed similar laws.
With her other siblings coming up for college, Aguilar knew she could not ask for family help for postgraduate studies. Work study is a significant aspect of the PhD experience, but because of her status she was not allowed a work permit. When she graduated with her Bachelor of Science in 2011, with a GPA of 3.8, she spent a year volunteering in the lab of Ariel Escobar, PhD, at UC Merced, studying the heart to stay ready for any sliver of hope.
Hope came in 2012 with the enactment of DACA. Aguilar was able to pursue her postgraduate studies at UC Merced, becoming the first DACA recipient to earn a PhD at that institution, in December 2016.
Traveling an uncertain path
UC Merced’s Escobar was a collaborator of Josefina Ramos-Franco, MD, PhD, an assistant professor in the Rush University Department of Physiology and Biophysics, and Ramos-Franco invited her to do her postdoctoral work there. Aguilar began in November 2016 under a DACA work permit.
The life of a postdoctoral fellow is itinerant but exciting, and Aguilar says she will go wherever there is a chance to learn more. She says she likes the environment at Rush and likes Chicago, even though it’s very different than the small town she came from.
But some obstacles still remain because of her citizenship status. Many grants and fellowships are still not open to her, and travel is more complicated as well. Aguilar is unable to leave the country to attend conferences and symposia for work.
DREAM and DACA offer no path to citizenship, and the traditional road to naturalization is slow. Her mother’s quest has been in progress for more than 20 years. For children of those who reach the front of this line, there is an opportunity to apply for an immigrant visa, but this chance has passed for Aguilar because she is over 21 and married.
"I stand with all undocumented immigrants when I say I'm scared,” she says. “On a daily basis I'm fearful of my family getting deported."
A worrisome climate
The Trump administration has been explicit in its views on certain aspects of immigration, simultaneously issuing executive orders banning travelers from select majority-Muslim countries while increasing internal monitoring and deportations of undocumented immigrants already in the country.
These are large and scary factors beyond an individual’s control. For Aguilar and her husband, who also is undocumented, they must have contingency plans for themselves and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter in case one or both of them are taken away. They are alone in Chicago, without family support.
Aguilar understands these choices are doubly hard for women.
"I do feel what women feel,” she says. “I am a professional, but I feel for the stay-at-home mom whose sole income is based on the husband who might not come home. I feel for them and feel like them at some point."
Standing strong
Aguilar continues to closely watch the political situation around DACA and immigration in general while planning the next step in her career as a postdoctoral fellow — an admittedly stressful situation. Her contingencies now cover not being able to practice the professions she’s worked so hard at.
“The other day I hung up my lab coat and felt some grief that it’s possible I won’t be able to [do research] again in this country,” she says.
If that happens, Aguilar says she will continue to be active in science: volunteering, studying and writing papers, hoping the winds will change in government. Democrats and some Republicans are supporting the latest version of a federal DREAM Act that Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) first introduced in 2001, which would extend DACA's protection and provide its participants with a path to citizenship; however, it faces uncertain prospects, having failed to pass in Congress until now.
Till then she continues to work hard as she always has. She would like to have her own research lab in California, if possible in the Central Valley where her family settled. She says that region needs a research hospital like Rush, and she would like to be a part of establishing it.
Though she’s very aware of the challenges she faces, like a good scientist, Aguilar always keeps the bigger picture in mind. "Science doesn't have borders,” she says. “It's all for the good of humanity."
