This post was updated Nov. 4 at 1:28 a.m.

In a political landscape where undocumented communities cannot vote, alumnus and undocumented activist Jeffry Umaña Muñoz has found alternative avenues to enact change this election season and beyond.

The legislative ground is always shifting under Jeffry Umaña Muñoz’s feet.

Umaña Muñoz took his first steps in El Salvador, though his only knowledge of the country comes from textbooks. He may not remember entering the United States at the age of 2 1/2, but he cannot recall a time when he was not aware of his undocumented status. The majority of his life has been marked by an ever-present truth – his place in the U.S. is shrouded in uncertainty.

Despite this unease, Umaña Muñoz’s political voice grew with age as he compared his experiences with classmates and later protested the 2017 inauguration. As a high school junior, he walked into his fifth-period English class one day to find sheets of paper waiting on each student’s desk. Scanning the page, it took a moment to decipher what they were before the realization struck him. What had tipped him off had been a field near the top.

It was a voter registration form. And on it was a blank space reserved for a Social Security number – something he did not have.

“I developed this reputation on myself of being this political person,” Umaña Muñoz said. “Yet here I was junior year, at the time that most of us should be preregistering to vote, and I was hiding in the bathroom stall crying because I couldn’t participate.”

In that moment, Umaña Muñoz felt a loss of autonomy – an experience that would continue to underscore his life as someone who is undocumented. Nowadays, however, Umaña Muñoz counterbalances his electoral grief with impassioned activist efforts.

The Chicana and Chicano studies and labor studies alumnus is known across the state as an organizer for the undocumented student movement. As one of the original students behind the ongoing Opportunity for All campaign and a founder of the Undocumented Student-Led Network, he now advocates for the equity of undocumented students in higher education. Though undocumented communities are unable to cast ballots and have often been reduced to a topic of electoral debate, Umaña Muñoz remains an active voice in the conversation.

Currently, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 prevents the legal employment of undocumented individuals in the U.S. without work authorization. Guided by the expertise of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy in the UCLA School of Law, the Opportunity for All campaign argues that this restriction does not apply to the hiring of undocumented students by state entities such as UCLA.

Umaña Muñoz led a working group that collaborated with the UC Board of Regents to devise a plan for the theory’s implementation through Regents Policy 4407. However, the plan was rejected by the board and delayed in January. Since then, the campaign has filed a lawsuit against the UC in the California Court of Appeal – with Umaña Muñoz as a petitioner – requesting that the University grant undocumented students access to on-campus jobs and paid educational opportunities.

Abril Olalde, a political science alumnus and friend of Umaña Muñoz, saw a video of his response to the vote to table the campaign’s implementation, in which she admired his vulnerability in expressing his frustrations with the regents.

“This is when I knew that this was going to be his life,” Olalde said. “He was in it for the long haul.”

Now a Latin American studies graduate student at California State University, Los Angeles, Umaña Muñoz said both his academic and activist pursuits center around how undocumented youth grapple with their status in a legal system where being undocumented is both criminalized and empowering.

But before he was open about his undocumented status, Umaña Muñoz’s childhood carried the weight of his unspoken identity. Though he qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an executive order providing eligible youth with temporary protection from deportation and work authorization status, he was too young to apply before its rescindment. Being unable to acquire jobs, access health insurance and cast ballots, each missed milestone slowly became more of a differentiating factor between him and his peers.

The situation reached a boiling point as he began to apply to colleges. He was ineligible for any form of federal aid, and inconsistent application conditions for undocumented students further exacerbated concerns about funding his undergraduate education. Ultimately, Umaña Muñoz was offered a full ride to Harvard University, but an impending REAL ID deadline meant he may no longer have been able to access domestic flights. Ineligible for that specific license, he turned down the offer, fearing separation from his family in California.

However, these obstacles are nothing new for Umaña Muñoz. He often feels like the restrictions imposed by his status force his hand in situations where his peers with legal status would otherwise have a choice.

“My life exists in between sentences of the statutes of the United States of America,” he said. “Folks don’t think about that gray area because it should be impossible to live in the gray area. And by all intents and purposes, it is made to be almost impossible to live in that gray area. And yet, we are here.”

Motivated by the desire to share stories from the community, he said he specifically sought out on-campus organizations led by undocumented students, such as Improving Dreams, Equality, Access and Success at UCLA, because it wants to fundamentally reform a flawed immigration system. He contrasted this with major immigration nonprofits, which he believes largely operate on the idea of surviving within a permanently broken system.

“We definitely envision a moment in time where our organizations cease to exist, where our organizations are not needed, because we’ve broken with these horrible and divisive ideas,” he said. “That kind of difference in central paradigm impacts the way that these organizations approach their organizing.”

This was the philosophy Umaña Muñoz brought to the creation of USN, which he has co-chaired from 2022 onward. The other co-chair is Vanesa Cruz Granados, a fourth-year psychology student at UC Irvine who immigrated to the U.S. when she was three years old. Growing frustrated over her inability to apply for jobs because of her non-DACA, undocumented status, Cruz’s political interest was sparked at the age of 13.

The Opportunity for All campaign was Cruz’s introduction to statewide activism. Throughout her work, she has come to treasure learning the life stories of many undocumented students across California – a value she shares with Umaña Muñoz.

“He once told me that when he hears other people share their stories, that lives with him in his blood, in his heart and in his own stories that he brings up later,” Cruz said. “I don’t think those words are ever going to leave me. I honestly think that they fueled a lot of my activism.”

Umaña Muñoz said storytelling can also act as a source of community education that works in tandem with formal education to introduce alternative forms of resistance beyond voting. For this reason, he added that it is important to explore the foundational ideas of historical movements in the context of someone’s personal experiences.

“We’ve got to step down from the pedestal a little bit more and remember that if we’re fighting for the community, we’ve got to be in the community,” he said. “Liberation and the protest is not going to meet us inside of the ivory tower. It’s not going to meet me inside of Royce Hall. I better meet it on Broadway, in downtown LA, in the streets.”

As he discussed the history of IDEAS, Umaña Muñoz recounted a story about Tam Tran, one of its original founders and an undocumented student who testified before Congress about how her status affected her life. Days afterward, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided her home and prepared her family for deportation, though she ultimately persuaded Congress to advocate for their freedom.

The fear of deportation and political violence is still something Umaña Muñoz contends with. However, he faces these fears in the hope of shaping a future where they are no longer warranted. Even so, questions such as, “Are you registered to vote?” can act as a harsh reminder of the realities he faces as someone who is undocumented.

“Suddenly I’m once again the 10-year-old kid hopeful for the DACA program, the 8-year-old kid who couldn’t go to the San Diego Zoo,” he said. “Even though I’ve screamed at regents and screamed at politicians, I’m suddenly this little kid that’s terrified about whether or not he’s going to still stay in this country the very next day – whether ICE is going to knock down his door the next day and take his family and take him and erase everything he’s ever known.”

Umaña Muñoz is a firm believer in the power of narrative to combat the homogenization of the undocumented community. With estimates that over 11 million people living in the U.S. are undocumented, the Democratic and Republican parties have debated immigration policy for years. Whether intended to be favorable or otherwise, he said blanket statements made about the community by both major parties fail to capture its members’ humanity. 

Instead of thinking in terms of an abstract monolith, he suggests approaching the topic of immigration as a collection of individual human stories.

“Immigration is not the 11 million. Don’t think about the 11 million right now. Think about just me,” Umaña Muñoz said. “Now, think about my experience replicated across 11 million other lives. Because we never leave those folks behind as we share our own narratives.”

Though he embraces his life story with love, the experience of sharing it can become taxing. Because he must justify why action should be taken for his future, he feels he is held to a higher standard than presidential candidates. At the same time, storytelling can be freeing. Umaña Muñoz is perplexed by this contradiction, calling it both poison and an antidote.

“Let’s talk about the economic contributions (of undocumented immigrants), all of that, if you really want to, but why can’t we talk about my mom first?” he said. “Why can’t we talk about my dad and why he deserves to be treated like a human, not because of how long he works, not because of how many years he’s worked, but because he has a beating heart and he has two feet on the ground?”

With the 2024 presidential election underway, people who are undocumented are not eligible to vote in national, state and most local elections. Despite this, a common belief is that undocumented immigrants are regularly illegally voting in national elections, which Umaña Muñoz described as laughable.

Umaña Muñoz said knowledge gaps such as these demonstrate ignorance and a failure to develop an understanding of the undocumented experience. He takes it a step further and calls it intentional blindness.

While attending a legislative hearing as part of the Opportunity for All campaign, Umaña Muñoz said California State Senator Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh asked if people who are undocumented could acquire an individual taxpayer identification number, despite reports that undocumented workers pay over $8 billion in taxes in California. Similarly, he became frustrated when the regents failed to recognize that DACA was not a viable route for work authorization because the program had been effectively terminated via court order.

As people learn more about the immigration and naturalization system, Cruz hopes they recognize that the immigration system was born broken.

“I wish people would remember that we are human, that it’s human to migrate, that their grandparents probably migrated, if not their parents or their great-grandparents,” Cruz said.

While he encourages those who are eligible to vote to use it as a means to advocate for undocumented individuals, Umaña Muñoz cautions against treating voting as the be-all, end-all in terms of addressing immigration reform. Instead, he urges everyone to find creative avenues for their advocacy, especially those privileged with legal status who may otherwise become complacent with voting.

“Our peers with legal status, I expect so much more from you. We expect so much more from you,” Umaña Muñoz said. “At UCLA, in the community, you all have privileges that we all do not have, and you need to start using them, or else our lives are going to be the price that we pay for your indecisiveness, for your callousness and your selfishness.”

When deciding to become politically active, Cruz recalls her parents expressed concerns that she would be deported. Though she shares the same persistent fear, her faith in the spirited activism of the current generation acts as a source of comfort and confidence. In her eyes, the movement has grown beyond her.

“If I’m gone, someone else is going to take up that mantle, and if they’re gone, someone else is going to do it after them, and so on,” Cruz said. “There is no burning out this flame.”

An ex-roommate of Umaña Muñoz, Olalde witnessed the rise of USN through early protest signs and makeshift living room interviews. While she’s seen him face countless struggles, Olalde affirms that Umaña Muñoz will persevere in the hope of contributing to a better future for others. In the face of any problem, she said his first reaction is to worry about the well-being of the next generation of undocumented youth.

“There’s a lot of times where both me and him become hopeless about what’s going to happen next,” Olalde said. “But the next day, he wakes up, he gets up, and he just pushes forward. And at the end of the day, he’s going to follow the movement to the ends of the world.”

Regardless of the risks that accompany his work, Umaña Muñoz’s future will undeniably continue to include advocacy for the undocumented community. While the continuation of his efforts is not a question, Umaña Muñoz does ask that others with legal status join the community in expanding their efforts beyond the ballot.

“It’s easier to just pretend we live in the best country on Earth, where things just magically happen, … but we know,” he said. “We the undocumented, we know what the reality is. We feel the reality every day. We feel it on our backs. We carry it in our hands. We carry it in our heads, our bodies, take it with us everywhere we go.”