An undocumented single mother from Honduras who arrived in the United States as an unaccompanied 13-year-old now owns two businesses that in 2017 generated almost $5 million.
In 2014, Sayda Ayala feared deportation and couldn’t even afford the $495 fee to apply for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program after it was introduced by the Obama administration in 2012.
Finally in 2016, Ayala, who has a seven-year-old son, managed to save up and submitted her application.
Fast forward to 2018, this 28-year-old ‘Dreamer’ is now operating two business that generated almost $5 million in Southern California last year.
Ayala’s companies employee 15 workers, including five dreamers, and has spread her knowledge to a handful of other benefactors under the same immigrant policy who’ve opened their own businesses.
‘I’m so happy because there are a lot of things that I now do and I am not afraid to be told, ‘no’,’ Ayala told Univision.
Sayda Ayala couldn’t afford a $495 fee required to cover her DACA application in 2014. She is now a business owner of two companies that generated almost $5 million in 2017
Ayala dreamed of joining her parents and two siblings after they had already emigrated from Honduras after the Central American country was battered by Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
The then 13-year-old set out alone on a journey from her native to the Mexico-Texas border in September 2003 and was detained by Border Patrol agents. Three days later, Ayala was released and reunited with her family members.
The undocumented immigrant, who suffers from Lupus, dropped out of college at age 20 to tend to the birth of her only son, Caleb, after whom one of the companies is named.
Ayala found employment as a secretary with a truck sales company.
Years later she would eventually partner up with her then husband to purchase a truck.
She ended up as the outright owner as part of an agreement after the couple split up in 2014.
Heeding the business advice of an industry friend who owned a fleet of trucks, Ayala added her truck to his company and immediately started to reap the benefits of a vehicle she initially wanted no part of.
Ayala flipped her earnings and purchased another truck six months later.
She then formed what is now Caleb’s Express Transportation LLC, that operates out of Ontario, California, and last year made $800,000 delivering goods for Coca-Cola and Costco.
‘Three months later, I got another,’ said Ayala. ‘I was able to have 11 trucks.’
Her friend saw enough potential in Ayala, that he entrusted her with a half a million dollar loan, paving her way to jumpstart her own truck dealership company, Milestone Trucks Sales in Los Angeles.
It reported a $4 million earning to the IRS this year, doubling what she made in 2016 when the Obama immigrant policy granted her protection.
Sayda Ayala arrived from Honduras as an unaccompanied minor in 2003. 15 years later she’s running a shipping company and a truck sales company
However, her business slumped earlier this summer as she was stuck in limbo after as the Trump administration fought to end the DACA program.
Since the program that would renew her worker’s permit was temporarily placed on hold, it also meant that her driver’s license could not be renewed until the matter was resolved in courts.
Honduran immigrant Sayda Ayala with her eight-year-old son. Ayala is a ‘Dreamer’ who now runs two multi-million dollar businesses
Under DACA, roughly 700,000 young adults, often referred to as ‘Dreamers’, were protected from deportation and given work permits for two-year periods, after which they must re-apply to the program.
Last month, a federal judge in Texas ruled against immediately halting the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – but indicated that his final decision in the case will likely kill the program.
DACA shields an estimated 700,000 immigrants – known as ‘Dreamers’ – from deportation because their parents brought them to the U.S. as minors.
Texas and seven other states are suing the federal government in an effort to end DACA, arguing that the program harms the states and their residents. The Trump administration has refused to defend DACA, leaving immigrant advocacy groups to take up the cause in court.
‘I am the example of the business,’ argued Ayala, ‘that paid them more than $ 50,000 in taxes and the business of a dreamer to which, if they do not renew DACA, will stop generating taxes to this government.’