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Lopez’s two younger siblings were born in Texas, but for years, he lived in almost constant fear of deportation.

As a sophomore, the now-18-year-old Adamson High School student took a job at an east Oak Cliff pizza shop, where the owners paid him about $4 an hour in cash. He couldn’t get a drivers license, and he started losing hope.

“I would get depressed about it sometimes because I didn’t think I would be able to go to college, and that’s something that I really wanted to do,” he says. “I stopped trying because I thought that I wouldn’t be able to get a job or anything.”

Besides that, he doesn’t know anyone in Mexico, so if he had been deported, “I would be lost,” he says.

An estimated 65,000 students graduat- ing from American high schools every year were brought by parents or guardians into the country illegally as young children. Once their high-school careers are over, their options are limited, especially if they lack ties to their home countries.

Lopez might’ve been one of them, washing dishes, taking fast-food orders or working as a meat packer rather than pursuing college and a career. But last year, he was awarded a two-year student visa, which allows him to work.

It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving kid, says Timmy Martin, automotive technology teacher at Adamson.

Lopez now has early release for his job as a porter at Randall Reed Park Cities Ford Lincoln. And this summer, he will enroll in a two-year program at Brookhaven College wherein he will earn an associates degree and become a Ford certified technician.

“He’s a kid that’s just really gung-ho about his future, and he’s making it happen for himself,” Martin says.

Lopez says his mom, who suffered poverty and abuse at home in Mexico, encourages him to pursue education and a career. He is hopeful that someday he can become a citizen of the country that is his home through the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, the D.R.E.A.M. Act, which has failed to pass through Congress since it was first introduced in 2001.

Until then, he plans to take his career as far as it can go.

“My dream is to own my own shop one day,” he says.