On the eve of the upcoming well-announced ICE raids I see an interesting contrast of two images of America.

The first image is ICE out in force, rounding up undocumented workers and families. Maybe these people being rounded up are in the United States illegally, maybe some committed crimes, maybe they are living off the largess of the American taxpayer. I don’t know. What I do know is it is a dark scene. One with no winners, only losers. One with fear, hopelessness, despair. 

Contrast that image to another image of America I prefer: the image of an unnamed DACA kid I know, really not a kid anymore but grown woman now. She came to the US with her parents from South America when she was a toddler and has known nothing but America since. Her parents walked away from everything they knew to bring her and her siblings here to the US legally at first, but then they couldn’t go back to their country which was deteriorating into a socialist dictatorship. So they stayed. The parents became contributing members of the economy, doing manual labor work that other Americans needed done. The kids went to school and learned. And they too worked to help the family make ends meet.

It’s unfathomable for me to imagine her now at age 24 being shipped back off to her country of origin where she doesn’t know the culture, has no friends or support structure, and would have no job.    

Though without official citizen status and all the benefits it bestows, this DACA kid I have known most of her life is every bit as American as my Virginia-born daughter and my Russian-born adopted son. I watched her display the best of our ideals that define the American spirit: determination, hard work, loyalty, belief in the best of others, and a perpetual hope for a better tomorrow. A superb student and armed with an undergraduate degree from a great North Carolina university, she is a contributing member of society with a great job in the tech sector, paying taxes, paying rent, purchasing stuff that further fuels our economy, and working to live out and perfect that American dream.

This America we live in is not perfect by any stretch. We don’t always live up to the ideas and ideals we say define us. And yet wherever I travel across Africa, and Asia, and Latin America, we are still looked to as the model – land of hard work, ingenuity, opportunity. Land where the rule of law, transparent democratically elected representational government, a free press, private ownership of land and commerce all set the stage for unleashing people’s God-given potential.

Some politicians’ dark rhetoric attempts to divide us and serves as a flammable accelerant of the worst fears, resentment, and racism in some Americans; yet our American ideals transcend this rhetoric, and the American dream is still a beacon of light for many around the globe. In the face of ICE raids, a broken and antiquated immigration system, political divisiveness, and uncertain futures for Dreamer kids, I think of this DACA young woman and my heart is full. I am hopeful in the long future of our nation when I think of her and what she will contribute to the United States of America and beyond, representing the best of who we are as America to the rest of the world.