LOS ANGELES _ Behind closed doors, Bertha Martinez and her husband, Victor Soriano, often discussed how they would tell their oldest daughter that she was in the country illegally.
"We didn't want to hurt her," Soriano said.
Paying someone to sneak 7-year-old Brenda and 3-year-old Diana across the border in the back of a minivan had seemed like the right choice in 2002.
In their L.A. apartment, the girls' happy portraits and their many certificates of achievement were testament enough that coming to the U.S. had been good.
But as Brenda grew older, as she headed toward college and work, the potential consequences of her legal status weighed more heavily on Soriano and Martinez.
Obama's 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program relieved the pressure for this couple and thousands of other parents, many in danger of deportation themselves.
Their children _ nearly 800,000 _ were given the chance to drive, study and work without fear of deportation.
"My daughters are going be OK," Martinez thought.
Then came the Trump administration's announcement that it would phase out DACA _ and day after day of mixed messages since.
These are the stories of parents, whose children's futures again are in limbo.
