Elias Rosenfeld, who emigrated from Venezuela to the United States as a boy in 2004, has faced a precarious future for most of his young life.
A few years after their family arrived in Florida, his mother died of cancer. Elias and his sister moved in with their undocumented father.
But the boy didn't realize at the time that without his mother able to renew her visa, his legal status -- which depended on hers -- soon lapsed. It wasn't until the ninth grade, when he applied for a learners' permit to drive, that he learned he was undocumented."It was a total shock," said Rosenfeld, now 19. "It was devastating."
Elias Rosenfeld as a boy with his mother Anabella and sister Sharon.
After living in the shadows for years the teen found some relief in 2012, when President Barack Obama issued the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a measure that granted protections and work privileges to about 750,000 so-called DREAMers like himself who were brought to the US as children.
President Donald Trump, whose hardline position on immigration has left undocumented immigrants throughout the US fearful that they could be deported, said last month that DREAMers without criminal histories would be allowed to remain in the US.
But now a recent shift in tone by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has Rosenfeld and others like him fearful that their days in the US may be numbered.
Last week ICE published a series of messages on Twitter stating that DACA status was no guarantee against deportation.
Read more at CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/12/us/daca-recipient-fear-ice-tweets/index.html