As a high school senior in Dallas in 2006, Greisa Martínez Rosas helped organize hundreds of her classmates to walk out in protest of a federal bill that would have made it a felony to be an undocumented immigrant. She herself was undocumented; her family had come to Texas from Hidalgo, Mexico, when she was a child. “I grew up feeling really ashamed about that and really scared,” she says. “Fear, I think, is a fuel to get us to a different world.”

Now, Martínez Rosas is fighting to create that world as executive director of United We Dream (UWD), the largest immigrant youth-led network in the U.S., since 2020. In the role, the 37-year-old has fought to preserve Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Established in 2012, the federal policy protects Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, from deportation and allows them to work legally. Recent increases in administrative delays have created additional hurdles for DACA recipients. The program has also faced repeated challenges in the courts. Still, as of 2025, more than 500,000 people are enrolled. “I'm really proud of having been able to drive the strategy that has defended the DACA program that has impacted millions of lives and industries here in the U.S.,” she says.

Amid a significant increase in immigration enforcement across the U.S., some DACA recipients have been detained, or even deported, despite having active DACA protections. So in the past year, Martínez Rosas steered UWD to help millions of young people organize protests, advocate against deportations, and assist immigrants facing removal. With over 1.2 million members nationwide and more than 100 local groups, UWD’s recent work has ranged from members in New Mexico advocating to shut down detention centers to counterparts in Connecticut organizing for health care access for immigrants. The organization also offers comprehensive resources, including guides to knowing your civil rights in your homes and communities filing a DACA renewal request (which must be done every two years), or traveling safely while enrolled in the program. 

In October, UWD partnered with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Abundant Futures Fund to launch the Defending Our Neighbors Fund, which has raised over $14 million to provide legal support for immigrants across the country through existing groups, offering legal representation and supporting community bond funds.

Martínez Rosas sees her organization’s work as one part of achieving a larger goal: creating a more hopeful future for young Dreamers. “The members of United We Dream have come to see citizenship as a foundational infrastructure for a functioning democracy; you can't build a stable economy on exclusion,” she says. “For me, this idea of citizenship is really about belonging—and a belonging that creates stability for families, for kids, for society.”