The fear and betrayal are the things that my mind kept running back to throughout the week as I tried to wrap my head around the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) news.

You may have seen something to this effect on your television, phone or computer. Maybe you heard about it on the radio driving to or from class. It’s also possible that you actually read the email from our own college president, Jack Daniels III, addressed to all staff and students last Thursday evening. The bottom line is that DACA has been all over the news in the last few weeks, both nationally and locally

The Trump Administration has ended Deferred Action for Child Arrivals, or DACA, a government program that protects young, undocumented immigrants from deportation. The announcement came during a press conference given by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday, September 5 after days of speculation surrounding immigration policy.

Barack Obama created DACA through a 2012 executive order, according to NBC News. The program has since allowed hundreds of thousands of young people who were brought to the United States illegally as children to remain in the country. Applicants cannot have serious criminal histories, and must have arrived in the U.S. before 2007, when they were under the age of 16. DACA recipients, known as DREAMers, can live and work legally in the U.S. for renewable two-year periods. Since its inception in 2012, as many as 800,000 DREAMers have applied to join the program.

While the politicians, pundits, and public spend countless hours debating the issue, there will be as many as 800,000 so-called DREAMers that will go to sleep every night with what I can only imagine is the most dreadful, crippling fear in their hearts and minds. It’s this fear and uncertainty that we need to address now, while Congress hopefully takes speedy action to replace the DACA initiative with something that still provides for similar protections for these innocent DREAMers.

Just try and imagine the fear. The fear of being snatched from your home, in your homeland, only to be sent back to a country whose capital city you might not even know. The fear of having wasted countless hours pursuing a degree you might never be able to use. The fear of being separated from your true home, where your heart is. Take it from DREAMer and recent college honors graduate Ricardo Lujan-Valerio, 22, of Oregon, who was recently quoted by NBC News: “If it ever came to the point where we get taken back to Mexico, it’s really, really worrisome, because that’s not home,” he said. “That’s where my roots are, that’s my culture, but at the end of the day, this is my home.”

And how about the betrayal? Betrayal, not by a single person, or even an institution, but by a government you only know as your own. The government you grew up learning about in schools. The government you saluted every morning as you pledged your allegiance to the flag and literally recited the words “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Think about how these DREAMers and their families must feel now, having trusted their sensitive information to the United States, having agreed to jump through the hoops required of them to participate in American employment and educational opportunities.

They say to you one day that it’s OK to share your personal information with them, that it won’t be used against you in any way so long as you abide by certain DACA rules and regulations. You spend five years paying DACA fees, filing multiple renewal applications, paying taxes without reaping many benefits, contributing to the economy and your community. All of the sudden, though, that sense of security, that promise, is retracted. Just as quickly as Obama unilaterally acted to protect DREAMers, Trump has done the same to put these young people in a state of anxiety.

“These are the good immigrants,” Madison College Vice President for Equity, Inclusion and Community Engagement Lucia Nunez told me in our conversations last Thursday evening. In light of the news that DACA had been rescinded, many of us are at the point where we are delineating between “good” and “bad” immigrants. This certainly isn’t to be judgmental. It’s simply because we cannot understand why this group of productive members of society are suddenly being terrorized with the fear of deportation. It truly hurts my heart to say that I’m yet to find a justifiable answer to that question.

In the meantime, however, as we keep a watchful eye on Congress, we must do what we can to protect and support those DREAMers on our campus and in our community. We should all be proud of our college in their early and continued efforts to do just that, as can be seen in the first few paragraphs of President Jack Daniels III’s email: “Madison College joins with the American Association of Community Colleges and American Council on Education in standing firmly in support of DREAMER students. Our college’s mission focuses on providing open access to quality education that supports individual success and strengthens our communities. Madison College practices inclusiveness in our classrooms and student services, particularly for our communities of color, immigrants, and other underrepresented populations.”

I personally support the mission of Madison College to be an ally to all those seeking equal access to quality education. I encourage you all to stand up to all forms of intolerance and oppression, which I do indeed consider the rescinding of DACA to be an act of. To better arm yourselves with the knowledge and resources to accomplish this goal, be on the lookout for DACA-related news and information around Madison College campuses, including information sessions and a website dedicated to DACA events and resources.

For those of you who are feeling any form of fear, anxiety, pain or disappointment, just know that you are not alone. Keep fighting. And most of all, keep dreaming.