When Evelyn Valdez-Ward discovers that she's undocumented, she fears her dreams of becoming a scientist are over. 

Evelyn Valdez-Ward is an undocumented, Latina, scientist and PhD student at the University of California, Irvine. For her thesis, she studies the impact of California's drought on the ways that plants and their soil microbes (fungi and bacteria in the soil) communicate and interact with one another. In addition to doing research, she's extremely passionate about advocating for undocumented students in STEM. She recently published her story "I'm an undocumented scientist fighting for my Dream" in Science, and was invited to speak at the March for Science rally in DC to advocate for Dreamers in STEM. She has been awarded a UCI's Dynamic Womxn's Award for Outstanding Social Justice Activist, and the Svetlana Bersahdsky Graduate Student Award for her lobbying and advocacy efforts. She plans to continue lobbying and fighting for her undocumented community after graduating, and work in science policy, where she can continue to advocate for both science and minorities in STEM.

This story originally aired on August 31, 2018 in an episode titled “Trials by Fire: Stories about difficult paths to science.”

Story Transcript

I am an undocumented scientist.  I study the way that drought affects the interactions between plants and their soil microbes.  I do this because I’m helping solve the nation’s top challenges.  See, by 2050, earth’s population is expected to double and that means that agricultural production has to increase by 70% or more.  That’s a lot for us to figure out how to feed everybody.  But we can’t do that unless we understand the way that climate change is affecting our plant ecosystems. 

I love what I do and I love plants, obviously, but I almost didn’t get the chance to fall in love with science.  My parents brought me to this country when I was only six months old.  Growing up in Texas meant that the first words I ever heard in English in school were, “Speak English.  This is America.”  I was only four. 

Still, school was everything to me.  It was the one thing that I was good at.  It was the one thing that made sense so, obviously, in high school I knew that my next step was college.  College was the place to be.  I know.  What a nerd, right? 

But when I brought my college applications to my mom, the first question that it asked was social security number.  That’s when my mom looked at me and she started to cry.  She told me that I was undocumented. 

I didn’t make much of it.  I didn’t know what it meant because up to that point my parents had protected me from my status.  I didn’t know the fear behind it.  I didn’t understand it until I asked my teachers for letters of recommendation. 

When I went up to my teachers and I asked for my letters of rec and then I shared with them my new status, suddenly things, changed.  They all told me the same thing.  That I should just give up.  That as an illegal, I was never going to be able to do anything with my life.  That I didn’t matter.  How did I go from being this great student to, all of a sudden, I don’t matter?  I was dehumanized in an instant. 

My world came crashing down.  I was so upset I stopped going to classes, stopped turning in assignments, my grades started slipping and I fell into really deep depression.  I stopped eating.  I stopped caring.  I stopped living. 

I was so sick that I was hospitalized and the doctor told me, “You have to eat to live,” and I thought, “What for?  What’s the point?” 

It seems so silly because, within a few months of knowing my status, I couldn’t handle it and look where I was.  But my parents had been doing it for such a long time.  They risk their lives everyday just to go to work and to provide for us and to provide for a better life for us and yet I couldn’t handle it.  How did they do it? 

When I came back to class, it seemed like no one noticed.  No one noticed I was missing for school, except for one person, my calculus teacher.  In the middle of class he took me down to the side and he was like, “What’s going on?  What’s wrong?”  I just started crying and I told him everything.  I told him that I didn’t care anymore.  And then he started crying too.  Now, we’re both just crying in the middle of math class. 

Until he approached me, he hugged me and he said, “Don’t worry.  We’re going to figure this out.” 

That was the first time since I found out about my status that I felt safe again.  I had found my first ally. 

My parents were my biggest cheerleaders.  In that time, there were these secret meetings where parents would gather to figure out how do we help our kids apply to college when they're undocumented?  In these secret meetings they found out that instead of using your social security number, you use your tax ID number.  Yeah, we pay taxes.  Did you know that? 

So when I finally got my application together I sent it out and then I waited.  Then I got back my first acceptance letter into the University of Houston downtown.  I was so excited I ran to my mom and we’re just crying.  She hugs me and she goes, “I knew you could do it.”  But we still didn’t know how I was going to pay for classes. 

That summer, we were gathered at my grandma’s house.  We go to my grandma’s house a lot because it’s the kind of place where you gain ten pounds after one meal.  We were all eating together and we had the news on.  That’s when we watched as President Obama took the stage and announced DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a protective temporary status from deportation. 

Oh, my God.  This was it.  This was the answer.  Everybody started crying.  Everybody is hugging me.  I start shaking.  I’m like, “Oh, my God.  This is it.” 

But the application was a different story.  See, for the application, you have to turn in a lot of information about yourself.  Your history, your background, when did you get to this country, when did you enter, who did you enter with?  It wasn’t just about me but about my parents as well. 

And knowing that this was temporary, what would happen if they ended the program?  Were they going to target me?  My parents?  Were they going to deport us?  It was terrifying.  But if I got DACA that would be the answer to everything, because in Texas if you don’t have any kind of documentation you can’t get a license. 

So I was taking a bus to school.  I would have to wake up at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. just to get to school, go to classes all day, come back, if I was lucky be home by 10:00 or 11: 00 and then start all over again.  I was averaging like three hours a night and I didn’t have any money to pay for books or any of my school supplies. 

As a family, we decided together it was worth it.  It was worth the risk to apply. 

Part of the application was proving your presence in the country from the moment you entered until they announced DACA.  Do you remember where you were every single day of your life in this country?  Because I had to prove that.  In between all the obvious free time that I had, I had to go to every single school and collect any kind of sample that they had with any kind of dates that was possible.  I saw old writing samples, old math worksheets and I got to say I was pretty bad at coloring inside the lines. 

Finally, we got all the application materials together.  The next hurdle was the application fee.  $465.  Who has that laying around especially as a college student?  But somehow my amazing parents got the money together and we sent the application out.  Then what came was the longest waiting period of my life.  We waited and waited.

Then finally I got something back in the mail.  I had to appear to go do my biometrics appointment.  You don’t say no to the government for these kinds of things.  So I go up to this building and it was called Application Support. 

I walk in and it was the creepiest place I had ever been.  It is a really cold, white building.  There's nothing on the walls.  There's a lot of immigrants there too.  You're not allowed to talk.  You're kept quiet and then the officer calls you up.  They swab your cheeks, take your fingerprints, take your picture and then send you home.  Then I waited again. 

Until, finally, I got it.  My DACA approval and with it my work permit.  I was so excited to finally do normal things.  I went, I got my social security number and then I decided that I was going to get my driver’s license.  So in between studying biology and physics, I was studying real hard core for my driver’s exam.  I had no idea which one was harder but I passed. 

When I finally got my license I was like, “Yes, I can finally drive myself to school and drive my family around,” because no one else had a license.  It was so exciting. 

Then I applied to my first job, Kroger as a cashier.  I was real bad at it particularly charging people for produce.  Like lemons and limes in Spanish is just limon.  I couldn’t tell the difference so I definitely charged people for the price of limes when they should have been charged for lemons.  Sorry, Kroger.  

Everything seemed to have been going well until my grandma broke her leg in three parts.  Someone as fabulous as my grandma of course has to break her leg in a fabulous way.  And being undocumented meant that she didn’t have health insurance.  She was also diabetic.  So we all decided as a family we were going to pitch in that summer, work, make money to pay for her medical bills. 

Then my mentor approached me and asked, “What about a research as a job?”  I was like, “Research?  What is that?  No, no.  I’m fine.  I'll just continue at Kroger.” 

Then he emailed me and he said, “Would you like to go to California all-expenses paid to study plant water transport?” 

I was like, “Eww, plant water transport?  Who the hell would ever care about that?”  It turns out that that was me because this all-expenses paid trip to California was to Bakersfield, California where there's nothing to do but research and I fell in love with plants.  That’s where I found my love for science and that was only possible because of DACA, because he was able to hire me as a researcher to work with him, and I was able to travel because I now had a license. 

But now, DACA was rescinded and currently we live court decision to court decision.  We have no idea what’s going to happen next and we’re living in limbo.  But science has given me a voice and I’m no longer going to live in fear.  Now, I use my story and I try to uplift others to show just how important undocumented people are, because I matter and my undocumented community matters.  I am an undocumented scientist.  Thank you.