Jeff Sessions

Los Angeles artist Hedy Torres, once undocumented herself, began a portrait series nearly a decade ago depicting DACA recipients using charcoal sketches deliberately left unfinished to symbolize the precarity of their immigration status. One subject, Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas, was drawn in 2017 while pursuing a graduate degree at Cal State Northridge, shortly after the first Trump administration moved to rescind DACA. In late September, after Pérez Cuevas obtained a green card through marriage, Torres completed his portrait during a public event in West Hollywood, interviewing him about the psychological toll of years of immigration limbo.

DACA provides renewable work permits and deportation relief for people brought to the U.S. as children, but no path to citizenship. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services no longer accepts new applications, and renewal processing times have lengthened substantially under the current administration, with some recipients losing jobs or facing deportation. Torres created four other unfinished portraits of DACA recipients, now held by the university, to be completed only if those subjects secure permanent residency.