MINNEAPOLIS — Growing up as an undocumented immigrant in the U.S., Edwin Torres attended 10 different public school systems. His family moved more than 12 times and they were homeless twice.
Now at the age of 31, Torres is making history. Starting in the fall, Torres will be the first undocumented immigrant and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient to pursue a PhD at the University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
When Torres told his parents the news, he said, "As you can imagine, they just cried. To see their struggles manifest into now having, in a few years, a doctorate in their family. It just justifies the work that they've done."
Torres was born in El Salvador in 1993.
"I was born at the end of a long civil war... It really plagued our community. I had a lot of family members that died, that were targeted, and it was just not in a safe place to grow up," Torres recalled.
Torres' father, Sirio, migrated to the U.S. when Torres was two — in search of a better life for his family.
"I had no memory of him and I didn't see him until I was eight," Torres said.
Torres' mother, Rosa, then joined her husband in America in hopes that with dual incomes they would be able to bring the kids over. Torres' grandparents raised him and his older brother for the first part of their lives.
When Torres was around the age of eight, he and his brother landed in LAX thanks to a tourist visa.
"Life was hard. At that time, I didn't know I was undocumented. I just knew I was just reunited with my mom and dad and my younger brother, who was born here," he said.
They grew up in Los Angeles, bouncing from job to job and house to house. Two times the family experienced homelessness. Torres remembers being around the age of 9 or 10 the first time they were homeless.
"It was actually kind of fun when you're that young. My parents made it a game. We would bathe in the oceans. We would sleep in parks. We would try to get food where we could and recycle cans where we could," he recalled.
But the second time it happened, Torres remembers being embarrassed by it.
"By that point, I was almost 12. I didn't want to be homeless anymore. My parents worked so hard. Two or three jobs and they still couldn't keep a roof over our heads and feed their three kids. I remember sleeping on the old, cold factory floors of a fish cannery at 12 and at that point, I was like, I don't want to do this anymore," Torres said. "All I could see was two adults who loved their kids, who wanted them to succeed, but they didn't know the language. They didn't have the status... But my parents both every single time said, 'Mijo, you're going to go to school. We did all this work so you could go to college.'"
Torres recalled the support he received from his teachers, no matter the school. His third grade teacher Ms. Munns would send him home with food for his family and help teach him English. Teachers also helped pay for him to go on his first field trip to the zoo. Another teacher bought him his high school yearbook senior year.
As student body president, he graduated top of his class. But as a Dreamer, the barriers to college were immense.
"Once again through the mentorship of counselors and teachers, they found a small school in Minnesota — St. John's University and the College of Saint Benedict — who gave me that opportunity," Torres said.
They took a nearly 2,000-mile journey, driving from California to Minnesota. Torres was racing against the clock to make it in time for a retreat planned for the new scholars. Their car broke down a handful of times. At one point, a man saw the family stranded at a gas station in Salt Lake City and lent them his car for the day so they could do what they needed to get their car fixed.
When they arrived at St. John's University, Torres turned to his parents and made them a promise.
"I told them, "Let me be here for four years and I promise you that your life will be better,'" Torres said.
Torres majored in political science and went on to work in politics for everyone from U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith to Governor Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan.
A few years ago, he pursued his masters in public policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
"My life has been shaped by my identities as an undocumented DACA recipient, Dreamer, and a queer individual. So how can I not be involved in a political system that I have no rights to?" Torres said.
Torres received a full-ride scholarship to pursue his doctorate and will start school in the fall. The U of M confirms that he is the first undocumented immigrant and DACA recipient to pursue a PhD at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Torres plans to continue the work he started during his masters, looking into the educational and economic impact that the DACA program has had on Dreamers.
Former President Barack Obama enacted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in June 2012 that prevents the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
But the program has received pushback. Last year, a Texas federal judge issued a ruling declaring that the DACA program is illegal. As a result, existing DACA recipients can continue to renew their DACA status but new DACA applications cannot be processed as it remains tied up in the courts.
"We're a huge chunk of about 12 million+ people that gets under-researched from policy, yet policies are created for us, and about us, or against us with little input from the actual community, let alone from someone in the community that has a PhD," Torres said.
Since moving to Minnesota, he's been able to bring his family to the state and buy his parents their first home. His husband is an ESL teacher in St. Paul.
Torres hopes to become a professor one day and pay it forward.
Torres said, "I hope it inspires others that no matter what you've been through... that I'm just a little kid from El Salvador who was given a chance and I took it."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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