I'm a DACA recipient who started writing poetry as a way to cope with trauma. Now, I help undocumented poets achieve their dreams of being published.

• Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet and DACA recipient who immigrated to the US at the age of 5.
• Castillo co-founded Undocupoets to help undocumented poets get published in the US.

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a beneficiary of DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a policy introduced by the Obama administration in 2012 that grants relief from deportation to over 600,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children.

The 34-year-old poet and activist is the co-founder of Undocupoets, a group that supports and promotes the works of undocumented poets.

This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Castillo. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My family immigrated to the US when I was 5. The journey from Zacatecas, Mexico, to northern California was difficult, but it was only three days. We moved for opportunity. There weren't any opportunities to live a life in the small town we came from in Mexico.

At the time, my mother was pregnant with her last child. Her sister had said, "What were you thinking, getting pregnant? You can barely feed the kids you have." That was the last straw for my mother.

We crossed through the mountains of Tijuana, we took a train, we took cars, and ultimately ended up in a small town near Yuba City.

But it's really the rest of the time after that — 30 years — and all the consequences of the events that have led up to today which have been most difficult. I had to grow up really fast, even as a kid.

The border itself is this visible thing that we can point to. I can take a picture of it, I can describe it. But there are things that are more ominous that chip away at you on a daily basis. That's where a lot of the trauma comes from — it's the things that are less identifiable that we might not associate with violence.

There are certain things you don't remember, or you block out. But there are other things that live firmly in your memory.

Immigration officials raided our home

I was in ninth grade when my father was deported in 2003. Three years later, when I was a senior in high school, officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement came to our house to look for him because they either suspected he had come back or because there was a clerical error.

It was a Sunday afternoon, the most quiet moment of the week. My mother was resting, and my brothers and I didn't have school. They invaded our home and ruptured our peace.

In that moment is when all of that growing up really had to hit. I had to keep my cool, I had to not cry. I had to go to my mom's room and tell her, "Somebody's here. Don't worry. Everything will be okay."

A child shouldn't have to have that kind of conversation with their mother. It's also utterly ridiculous to me that a dozen heavily armed men would need to surround a home with a mother and her three sons.

The only proof that I had for the officials that my father was no longer living in our house was that there was nothing left of him there. His toothbrush wasn't there, none of his clothes were there. We had already gotten rid of a lot of his stuff, so there wasn't a physical trace.

The only other proof I could offer was telling the officials, "Let me call my father and you can see that I'm dialing a phone number in Mexico." They took the phone number and left, and I think that was enough for them.

From then on, I've always had to relearn how to be okay in my home. I couldn't work or write in my house for many years. And now that I've just bought my own house — I built bookshelves last week — I've had to relearn how to be at peace at home.

I was one of the first in line for a DACA application

President Obama passed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA, in 2012 and it took effect in 2013 when I was 25. Up to that point, I had never had any documentation status.

DACA doesn't grant documentation status — it is a reprieve from the threat of deportation for those who arrived to the US when they were children or were under 35 by the time they applied.

I was one of the first in line when the application opened. I applied through my wife, who was a citizen, which meant I could fulfill my application process from within the country.

If you leave the country, there's a chance that you won't be able to return, or that you'll be denied your application. Even if I were to be denied, we wanted to be in the country so that I could appeal while I was here. I had seen my father's experience — he was already out of the country for many years when he re-appealed and was told, "Nope, sorry." But what can you do? You're already outside of the country.

We're still paying off a lot of legal debt — I just wrote another check to my lawyer last week.

Writing poetry helped me feel a sense of control

The first poem that I wrote was in high school. I wrote it to a girl named Ruby in my Spanish Literature class — 17 years later, we're married with a baby.

All of my poems are for her. My first book of poems is about her and for her, although it never names her. And of course, she's present in my memoir.

My first love was poetry. I started writing so that nobody could suspect anything of me; so that I could master language and manipulate it.

As I've lived longer, I've realized it was something that I could control while everything else was in flux. It was like when you watch a show over and over for comfort. That's what language was to me — and the most unwieldy place was poetry because that's where the most control is required.

Most poetry contests required citizenship or documentation

I was a creative writing major at California State University. Part of that process was thinking about publication and sending my work to poetry contests. Before I even got hyped up to think about applying for something, I looked for that small print to see if I qualified. Pretty much every first book prize in the country required citizenship or documentation. There was nothing worse than realizing you couldn't even apply.

In 2015, I reached out to the American Academy of Poets and asked them about this. We had a conversation, but it really wasn't anything formal, and I didn't get much across.

It just so happened that two of my friends who were at NYU at the time were having these same conversations. So, we got together and decided to start a campaign to raise awareness.

And we did — every single book prize in the country changed their rules after that. Since then, we've done a yearly Undocupoets fellowship to support the writing of undocumented poets with funding from the Academy of American Poetry.

These poets would have done their own thing regardless because they are good poets. We just highlight their work. Each year we select two fellows from a pool of applicants to help them financially, but also to help them make connections that aren't always offered to people who are underrepresented and marginalized.

The poets that we've selected have gone on to win major prizes and have been published here in the US and abroad. For me, it's been quite a journey seeing it grow from a campaign, collecting signatures to now being one of the people that poets turn to if they have a concern.

Personally, it's been really awarding — and there's still a lot more work to do.