Two brothers in Tampa share their experiences growing up undocumented

Diego and Leo Dulanto Falcon don’t remember much about Peru. Leo was eight and Diego was four when their parents brought them to the US in search of a better life.

Leo, being older, had some fleeting memories of gathering with their extended family and going to church. But one day his parents told him to say goodbye to his friends.

“It was the middle of the year. We left at three in the morning, and that was it,” the older brother said.

As children, they were never told why they had to leave. But as they got older, Leo and Diego put the pieces together.

Financial problems were to blame, Leo said. One of their relatives was able to find work in the US and become a citizen, which provided a glimmer of hope. But that route became much more difficult when they arrived in the country after September 11, 2001.

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Immigration laws have been tightened and that path to citizenship disappeared. The family overstayed their visas, hoping for an opportunity that never came. Eventually they became undocumented.

“I didn’t know until much later that I was an immigrant and what that all meant,” Diego said.

Leo was the first to learn about their immigration status in high school. He was a star student and dreamed of going to space. But his family did not have the necessary documents to send him to space camp, Leo said.

“I started asking questions,” Leo said. “And they told me what that would mean for me after school.”

This was before DACA was created, so its future was uncertain. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to go to college or find work.

“I didn’t care anymore,” he said. ‘I have drastically lowered my grades. I started to worry more about, ‘I have to work, I have to make money, I have to help the family, because there is no other way to help them now.’

Since the fifth grade, Leo helped his parents clean buildings, a job that Diego eventually took part in as well.

In Leo’s mind he thought, “that’s it, like this is the most I’m going to get out of life, that I’m going to clean for the rest of my life.”

For years, Leo and his parents hid this fact from Diego. It was to protect him, they said. But the weight of that secret took its toll on both of them.

“It put a wedge between us,” Leo said.

“Oh, that was 100%,” said Diego. “I definitely felt the wedge… growing up, I felt like I was in my own little bubble, and I had nowhere to go and no one to talk to.”

Diego said that as a child he was not allowed to play outside when his family was not home.

“Things I remember from my childhood are like a lot of caution,” Diego said. ‘It was virtually impossible for me to be with anyone once I left school. And besides the fact that I was at home with family, I didn’t really do much else.”

Sometimes the wedge between them created resentment.

‘I couldn’t have a relationship with you. I was even mad at you,” Leo said to Diego. “Because the way you reacted to something – even though I knew what it meant for the family – sometimes you didn’t, you had no idea.”

Loneliness, paranoia and anger characterized their childhood, the brothers said.

A turning point came when the Obama administration passed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012. The program gave undocumented youth, such as Diego and Leo, the opportunity to apply for temporary protection against deportation. In addition to providing them with a social security number, it also granted them a legal work permit.

But it took several years for the brothers and their family to trust that DACA was a real program and not just a scam.

Leo still has the newspaper clippings from when the program was over.

“I still remember that day,” Leo said. “We thought it was a trap. Everyone talked about it like it was a trap.”

Applying for DACA required submitting detailed personal information, including where they lived and biometric data such as fingerprints. Their parents have been scammed before by people posing as immigration lawyers, the two said. They had friends whose parents were taken by ICE and deported. Those friends were ‘never the same after that’.

But two years later, Leo said, “we just pulled the trigger.”

“You and Dad both showed me in the car what to say and exactly what to do,” Diego said. “We get to the metal detector and I cross over, waiting for him (dad).”

It was then that Diego realized he was going in alone.

“I was holding my papers like they were my bag, I was terrified.”

‘Getting Out Alive’

DACA made life easier in some ways, they said. But it also became more complicated.

Diego and Leo tried to find scholarships that would help them pay tuition and continued to work with their parents cleaning buildings.

The state allows residents, including undocumented immigrants, to pay tuition, a law that Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened to dismantle in 2023. But immigrant students like Diego and Leo still had to pay those thousands of dollars out of pocket. They were not eligible for federal aid.

“Everything we didn’t have to pay bills for was going to school,” Leo said.

For Diego, he was crushed by the pressure to perform well academically.

“I felt like if I did well enough in college, I could essentially make it out alive. That I could get a job and live a normal life,” Diego said. “I was super nervous because I thought I was going to screw up, just like I did in high school.”

Both Leo and Diego attended Hillsborough Community College before transferring to the University of South Florida. In college, they began connecting with other undocumented students and built a community that slowly emerged from the shadows.

They began sharing stories about their experiences with peers and eventually with each other.

“I think that was around the time the wedge was removed,” Diego said. “We started having open conversations about what it was like for me at the time, but also what it was like for you and how you got through it.”

“You risked your life for me, our family.”

Lion laughed. “I feel like I’m being fooled… for me it’s just, I’m glad you’re giving me peace of mind.”

Still bland

Florida is home to the fifth largest group of DACA recipients in the country, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Just over 21,000 live in the state.

But it is by no means a permanent solution, say Leo and Diego. Unless DACA holders find a path to citizenship — possibly through their job or marriage — they are stuck in limbo.

“I felt like I was a part-time citizen,” Leo described.

Of DACA is currently being challenged in federal courtthe brothers believe that the protection it offers is even weaker. In 2023, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the DACA policy is unlawful, preventing new applications from being processed. Current recipients can still renew their status every two years.

Leo and Diego, along with nearly a million other DACA recipients across the country, are watching the legal battle.

They’re not sure what would happen if the policy is reversed.

“Going back to our homeland would be like going to a new country,” Diego said.

Leo agreed. It would be like “if you threw away twenty years you would be starting over, that’s insane.”

But in many ways, they say they have always lived with this uncertainty. For now, they’re focusing on what they can do. Leo works as a software engineer and Diego is completing his master’s degree in public health at USF.

They know they’ve come a long way, but they’re not sure if one day it will all be taken from them.

“Who knows when we would get a decision,” Diego said, “or what that decision would be.”