As Supreme Court considers end to DACA, some Dreamers are already leaving US behind

Born in South Korea but raised in Montclair, New Jersey, Eun Suk "Jason" Hong seemed on the cusp of another American success story when he graduated from college in 2015.

Hong, whose mother brought him to the U.S. at age 10, landed a job as a financial planner and was looking forward to starting a career.

But in 2017, President Donald Trump moved to do away with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the program that allowed him to work legally in the U.S., and Hong's outlook began to change. In August, he quit his job and moved to Spain to seek a master's degree in business administration.

He's now barred for a decade from returning to the country where he grew up. But he's also left behind the anxiety of America's immigration wars.

"I wanted some certainty and control,'' Hong said in a recent phone interview from Madrid. "Emotionally it was one of the scariest ideas I had to accept."

Hong is among the "Dreamers" – undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children – who are leaving their adopted home in frustration. With the Supreme Court poised to rule on DACA's future by June, some are taking matters into their own hands and moving to Europe, Mexico and Canada.

Some of those enrolled in the program have been able to gain legal status while staying in the U.S. They've applied for asylum or visas or married American citizens. But others are saying goodbye to the only country many of them remember.

When Trump announced his plan to terminate the DACA program in September 2017, there were 689,800 active DACA recipients. That's declined by more than 40,000, to 649,070, according to the latest figures on the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services website.

Trump says the Obama-era initiative is unconstitutional, but his move to phase out the program has been blocked by legal challenges. The Supreme Court is expected to announce sometime before the end of June whether the president has the authority to end DACA.

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