Marlon Portillo started ninth grade with a dream: To be valedictorian of his Atlanta high school and go on to college.
His dream collided with political reality this spring.
Because Portillo entered this country illegally as a 10-year old, he is not eligible, even as the valedictorian of Carver School of Health Sciences and Research, to attend one of Georgia’s top universities as he planned or to receive federal financial aid or in-state tuition rates.
He had hoped to study engineering at Georgia Tech then intern at Google his freshman year. He’d show his parents, immigrants from El Salvador, their 12-hour work days in landscaping to support him and his sister were not wasted.
Instead of heading to Georgia Tech with a full-ride scholarship (for state valedictorians), Portillo plans to attend Fisk University, a historically black school in Nashville, and his family and teachers are trying to cobble together enough money for him to do it.
“It was devastating,” Portillo, 19, said of learning that his dream of Georgia Tech had been derailed.
Immigrants without legal status have demonstrated for years against Georgia rules that limit their college options.
They’ve sued Georgia’s Board of Regents, lobbied at the state Capitol and staged acts of civil disobedience, seeking unsuccessfully to reverse the policies.
However, many private colleges and universities admit students like Portillo — students who qualify for a special reprieve from deportation through the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.
“I feel like I’ve been here all my life,” Portillo said. To discriminate against him because of how he entered the country, well, “It’s not fair.”
The news that Portillo couldn’t attend Georgia’s top schools shocked his counselor at Carver School of Health Sciences and Research, Keala Edwards-Cooper. His parents pay taxes, she said, so she believed he would have no problem enrolling in college.
But after Georgia Tech rescinded Portillo’s admission, Edwards-Cooper and her colleagues decided that Portillo, who will graduate with a 3.99 GPA and enough college credits to qualify as a junior, would get to college somehow.
Carver graduates suggested Fisk University, which eventually offered Portillo admission and enough funding to cover about half of his $32,000 tuition and fees, Portillo and Edwards-Cooper said.
As of Friday afternoon, an online GoFundMe campaign Edwards-Cooper helped set up had raised about $5,000. The campaign asks for the full tuition amount, just in case Portillo's full scholarship amount doesn't come through.
Portillo is going to make it, Cooper said.
“He is one of those people, he is going to sit in those professors’ offices, they are going to know his name,” she said.
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