'Everything's like a gamble': US immigration policies leave lives in limbo

One day.

For Judith Ortiz, whose parents brought her to this country from Durango, Mexico, when she was 2, a mere 24 hours have made the difference between a life of freedom and opportunity and one constrained by limits and obstacles.

Ortiz and her twin sister, Janette, were raised in suburban Dallas, where Judith was her high school's valedictorian, graduating with a 3.96 GPA.

Both girls had remained in the country illegally as toddlers when their family overstayed a tourist visa. When they turned 18, they became eligible for benefits under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program designed to shield from deportation young people brought to this country illegally as children.

Because the girls have the same birth date, the same address and the same surname, their lawyer suggested Judith mail her application a day after her sister to avoid confusion.

Janette's paperwork was approved six months later, in June 2021. Shortly after, a federal judge in Texas blocked the government from approving additional DACA petitions. Judith's application — and her future — have been on hold ever since. She can't be sure that the mailing date, not some other arbitrary bureaucratic quirk, caused the fateful difference, but in her mind, that one-day delay in sending off the application is what has set their lives on different courses.

"Having DACA would make my life 100 times easier," said the 21-year-old, who attends classes at Texas A&M alongside her sister. "I was always scared of getting pulled over. There's things that people don't really think about sometimes."

Judith took the Armed