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On the morning of August 18, 2012, people began lining up outside FIU Law’s Clinic Office looking for help in completing the paperwork required under what was then the Obama administration’s brand-new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). DACA gave kids, who had been brought to the U.S. before they were 16 years old, work permits and temporary protection.

For Kenia Garcia, who was a law student at that time and a volunteer, it was a bit overwhelming. She quickly realized that every case in front of her was more than “just paperwork.”

“These were people who had been holding on to nothing for so long,” Garcia recalled. “All these people wanted was to come out of the shadows, and we could help them do it.”

Since then, the Clinic, along with a coalition of lawyers, nonprofits and volunteers, has processed more than 2,000 applications. It’s a routine process that should be little more than filling out the right forms. But without the Clinic, these children of immigrants could spend thousands on legal fees.

The DACA applications have become a major focus for a Clinic that was already the last resort for many South Florida immigrants. Juan Carlos Gomez, director of the Carlos A. Costa Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, says his focus has always been on the marginalized, especially undocumented immigrants who cannot help themselves – like persons with mental illnesses.

The Carlos A. Costa Immigration and Human Rights Clinic opened in 2004 to give FIU Law students an opportunity to practice under the supervision of a lawyer. Gomez started running it in 2010. The Clinic has become a major provider of legal services to poor immigrants. Gomez said it’s also about exposing students to actual people, rather than the hypothetical clients they imagine while reading cases. About 70 law students volunteer each semester.

“One of the things we’re trying to do is create something similar to a teaching hospital for the law,” Gomez said. “Part of this is exposing students to a world they never thought they would deal with and exposing them to actual people with real problems.”

Gomez says his interest goes back to the 1960s when his father was sent to a Cuban labor by the Castro government and when he saw how his family was persecuted by Castro supporters in Cuba. His family immigrated to the United States in the 1970s on the so-called Freedom Flights. While growing up in Miami, Gomez said he learned that “this is a country where anyone has a chance to succeed.”

“People like my family didn’t have a chance in Cuba. We had a chance here,” Gomez said. “We’re not fighting the U.S. government. We’re trying to work with it, to work fairly within the law, to make sure everybody has an opportunity.”

That wasn’t the case for those affected by DACA, Gomez said. Before President Obama announced the DACA program on June 15, 2012, the children of undocumented immigrants had little hope. They couldn’t go to college, get a job legally or get a driver’s license.

That was how Gaby Pacheco lived before DACA became law. The daughter of undocumented immigrants, she grew up in the States knowing she could be deported at any time. She helped organize marches and protests in support of the Dream Act, a proposed law that would have worked like give legal residency to persons who came to U.S. before they were 16 years old, who would finish high school, and who would serve two years in the military or attend two years of college. The Dream Act never made it through Congress.

At the end of that day in August 2012, hundreds of applications were completed and when the day was over, the volunteers and the families erupted in applause and cheers. Today, Garcia reflects back on that day – the day where her future in the legal field was decided. She once thought immigration law would be boring, but her eyes were opened and she knew what she had to do. “At one point I had 18 open cases,” she recalled. “I realized each one of these files was a family. Every file I worked on was someone’s future.”

Those cases made Garcia think of her own tale getting here. When she was 15, her family crowded into a homemade raft with their dog and two other families. They spent 23 hours at sea before making it to Florida. Following graduation in December 2012, Garcia and a partner opened Garcia and Qayum Law Group, which focuses on immigration law.

Pacheco has taken her experience and has helped to lead efforts to create a national scholarship program for DREAMers, as the Dream Act, or DACA, kids are often called and is the program director for The Dream.US.

For Gomez, when he’s meeting with new applicants, he often thinks of a saying his father often repeated: “El hambre duele,” hunger hurts. Gomez knew many of the DACA kids grew up wanting simple things their friends took for granted. They feared getting pulled over because they couldn’t get a driver’s license. They didn’t bother applying for colleges because they weren’t allowed to get financial aid.

“These are kids who had no hope,” Gomez said. “For the most part they were hopeless, and now they have hope again.