“I remember going to [Qdoba] and I got the application, but when I came to that last spot that asked for my Social Security number…I asked my dad, ‘Papi, what’s my Social Security number,’ and he didn’t answer,” she said. “And then, little did I know, I didn’t have a Social Security number.”

“I didn’t understand what that meant,” she added. “A number’s a number. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m still a person.”

Eve, who arrived in the United States on a tourist visa when she was six, turned in the application with the Social Security number slot blank. The interview went “perfectly,” she said, until she explained that she couldn’t provide the number.

“That’s when it really hit me,” Eve said. “I remember staying calm and saying okay and exiting through that door.”

But as soon as she left the fast food restaurant, Eve says she broke down.

“I ran and I ran, and I cried and I asked myself, why? Like, why me? Like, what did I do?” she said. “Like, what the—what the fuck does this number have to do with me?”

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Like Eve, Guerrero-Meneses found out he was undocumented in high school, when he started applying to colleges.

“I told my parents that I had to fill out the FAFSA, and they said, ‘Okay, we have to have a sit-down,’” he said.

Undocumented undergraduates at Harvard—students interviewed for this article said there are around 40—are eligible for the same financial aid as U.S. citizens and permanent residents. But Harvard is one of only a handful of institutions able to offer the same aid packages to domestic students and those it deems “international.” In many states, undocumented students who grew up and went to high school in-state are ineligible for in-state tuition at public universities.

While DACA grants undocumented students a postponement on consideration of their immigration case, it does not make them eligible for federal student aid and other financial support reserved for citizens and permanent residents. These financial constraints prompt some students to opt for working rather than attending college, or to shoot for private schools that could provide enough financial aid for them to attend.

“Harvard was the only one that would give me a full scholarship,” Guerrero-Meneses said.

Luis, an undergraduate who was smuggled across the Mexico-United States border with piñatas when he was seven, said he too was unsure whether he would be able to afford college until he was accepted to Harvard.

“I figured I was going to have to go to a really inexpensive school—if I could go to college,” said Luis, who asked that only his first name be used due to his immigration status.

Herbert B. Castillo ’14, the president of Fuerza Latina, said that while some undocumented students he knows feels safe from deportation at Harvard, the student organizations’ members have discussed what happens once they graduate. Castillo also said there has been some worry about how the upcoming presidential election could affect the students who have applied for deferred action.