>WASHINGTON — Diego de la Vega has a new life in Colombia—one without fear, with freedom of mobility, and with the agency he never had during his 23 years in New York City. Born in Quito, Ecuador, de la Vega migrated to the United States as a 7-year-old in 2001 on a visitor’s visa that he overstayed. Thus began his life as an undocumented American. >“It was very clear to me early on that our status was different. Even as a child, I understood what being illegal meant. We knew we had to protect ourselves,” de la Vega said in an exclusive interview Wednesday with Migrant Insider. “We lived in fear because we were not of the right status, but I had a pretty good childhood in New York. We worked hard, starting out in a basement apartment. But we went to school and got jobs.” >De la Vega became politically active after witnessing the failure of the Dream Act in 2010, when the bill fell just five votes short in the Senate. He started organizing for immigrant rights, first as a communications worker in the New York State Assembly, then for Make the Road NY, an immigrant rights organization. His first major victory came in 2021 when, as digital organizer for Make the Road, he helped secure a $2.1 billion fund that provided $15,000 relief checks to undocumented workers excluded from federal pandemic aid. >“That was direct money in people’s pockets,” recalled de la Vega, who by then had enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. >His work did not go unnoticed. Within a year, he was hired by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s reelection campaign, where he eventually became her deputy communications director. “Alexandria comes from an organizing background herself, so she likes to hire people who share that experience,” he said. “She’s an excellent communicator, and the team she built is top-notch.” >The respect was mutual: “Diego is amazing,” said AOC on Wednesday in a brief hallway interview, adding: “We love him.” However, de la Vega's aspirations to work on Capitol Hill were stymied by House rules barring DACA recipients from serving as aides in Congress. >Our conversation with de la Vega covered a range of topics, and his perspective offered a rare insider’s critique of immigration advocacy. Below are key excerpts from our interview: >ON LEAVING THE UNITED STATES—MAYBE FOREVER "In my late 20s, I began to seriously consider how precarious my future in the U.S. was. I thought about what would happen if I just left, if I went to Latin America, if I embraced my identity as a Latino instead of trying to fit the image of a picture-perfect immigrant. >Not being able to leave the U.S. or visit my country was hard. Regardless of the 2024 election outcome, the likelihood of amnesty, citizenship, or comprehensive immigration reform seemed slim. Even if Kamala [Harris] won, we could be waiting another four years, and then another four after that. >People infantilize Dreamers as youth, but I’m 31. I have a wife. We were thinking about children, but we had no certainty. I wanted to be somewhere where I wasn’t considered illegal, where I wasn’t persecuted by the state, where I was welcome. So in December, my wife and I moved to Bogotá. She was undocumented too, but without DACA, so she was far more vulnerable. In Colombia, I easily got a visa. We have a future here. We have rights. These were things we had been searching for—for 23 years." >ON THE STATE OF IMMIGRATION ADVOCACY "I became frustrated with how the immigration movement was operating. The messaging, the policy proposals—there was a massive amount of money behind them, yet they all failed. The movement has become calcified. It’s run by executives with foundation ties who are disconnected from field workers and grassroots leadership. >For 20 years, it’s followed the same Obama-era strategies, with its biggest success being DACA, which has been on life support for years. When it became clear that DACA was heading to the Supreme Court, it did not seem hopeful. Protections are going away, regardless of who is in the White House. The strategy hasn’t adapted to the modern era. >Biden had a trifecta—the House, Senate, and White House—but dropped the ball. The push for reform ended with a Senate parliamentarian ruling. They needed to step back and ask, ‘How did it come to this?’ But instead, they followed the same playbook. The same marches. The same rallies with the same speakers. And then they repeated it the next year." . . [Source](https://migrantinsider.com/p/aoc-campaign-aide-self-deports-to) Related - [Excellent question, Robby Starbuck.](https://x.com/robbystarbuck/status/1898201115172167928) Or [Nitter](https://nitter.poast.org/robbystarbuck/status/1898201115172167928)