Over 11.2 million undocumented people live in the United States, Roberto Gonzales told DePaul students and staff at an event last Tuesday, of which 2.1 million have lived here since childhood. Undocumented peoples’ ability to remain in the U.S. depends on who is elected as president this November, but many issues they face now they have faced for years.

Gonzales framed the political landscape and anxieties for undocumented people today by referring to controversial Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s immigration rhetoric and President Barack Obama’s administration’s unprecedented rate of deportations, during his event called “Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America” which was held on Oct. 11 at Cortelyou Commons by roughly 40 people.

That rate has mounted to 2.5 million people — up from 23 percent from the Bush administration.

An assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Gonzales has spent 24 years of his life studying the lives of undocumented people.

During the event, Gonzales explained how increasing rates of deportation came to be by examining changes in policies made in the 1970s through the 1990s. During this stretch of time, the United States had decided to become tougher on immigration. More resources were dedicated to border control and the consequences migrants caught were amplified,  he said. This resulted in more workers settling with their families in the U.S. rather than individual family members leaving and returning from seasonal work.

With so many migrant families residing in the U.S., the amount of children growing up as undocumented people increased to unprecedented rates, according to Gonzales. The influx of undocumented children living in the U.S. would lead to the landmark Supreme Court case, Plyler v. Doe.

Plyler v. Doe — a 1982 Supreme Court case found states denied undocumented students a free public education unconstitutional — was criticized by Gonzalez, as he contested the decision was “framed too narrowly.”

To further his point, Gonzalez described how the court decision did not do enough to “fully integrate undocumented people into American fabric” as it failed to address life after K-12 education.

What Gonzalez means by “American fabric” is the right of passage undocumented students get to experience. He explains this dilemma by acknowledging how undocumented children are able to learn American lessons of working hard in school, live the high school experience and date, but they are unable to obtain a driver’s license and restrained from applying to colleges.

Gonzalez added that the transition from childhood to adulthood is an equally difficult process.

“An undocumented child makes transitions to adolescence and adulthood, they move from a protected to unprotected status, from inclusion to exclusion, from de facto legal to illegal,” he said.

Gonzalez used his own personal experience of working in Los Angeles to illustrate the difficulties undocumented people face when they transition from being legal to illegal.

One of his subjects, Misto, talked about the physical torment felt after graduating high school.

“Yeah, I think about it a lot,” Misto said. “I’m always thinking about it. What happens if I get picked up? What if my boss finds out? I get dizzy a lot and my stomach is always hurting. My mom says I have an ulcer.”

Fear and anxiety are a common theme among those Gonzalez studied. He also found that many undocumented people feel a social disconnection from their peers, especially during the college application season.

Gonzalez emphasized the difficulties of undocumented people as they look back to their high school education. Gonzalez interviewed a girl named Grace who finished as salutatorian but was not able to continue her studies like the rest of her peers.

Grace, a social girl and remarkable student, talked about her dilemma of explaining to her friends why she would not apply to UCLA or Stanford like they did.

“I didn’t want to say anything, but I felt really bad,” she said. “They were all happy and hugging each other, but I couldn’t share in their excitement. I felt like I had to hide.”

The lecture later moved on to topics such as police profiling, the stress of secrecy felt by undocumented workers, failing schools and addressed the current political atmosphere around undocumented workers, which he called, “highly stigmatized, highly charged.”

Many people in the United States are hostile towards undocumented people because they fear they are losing their foothold in the economy and in politics, Gonzalez said.

He also said Trump has played the “boogeyman” that validates people’s beliefs that undocumented people are taking jobs and committing crimes.