[Unidentified Protesters:] Home is here! Home is here! Home is here!
[Baldwin:] What they're chanting, "Home is here," an emotional scene there on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, justices heard arguments in this historic case that will decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants in this country. These people are among the roughly 700,000 young people who were brought to the United States by their parents as children. The fates of the so-called dreamers has been in limbo really ever since President Trump called for an end to the Obama era DACA program. And that gave them the right to legally work in the United States and shielded them from deportation. So, CNN contributor Caitlin Dickerson is with us. She is the national immigration reporter for "The New York Times." She's written extensively about this issue. And Pierre Berastain Ojeda is a DACA recipient ever since 2012. He came to the U.S. as a child with his parents from South America in the late '90s and was an undocumented immigrant for 14 years. So, welcome to both of you. And, Pierre, let me begin with you there in Washington. You are in Washington because you wanted to be there on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. We just played the chants, "Home is here." What was that moment like for you?
[Pierre Berastain Ojeda, Daca Recipient:] It was beautiful. I think that, Brooke, if I take you back to when I was some undocumented, I can think of the many sleepless nights and the times that I felt alone. And the only time that I felt that I was able to make it through the next day was when I was in community, when I was with people who understood it. And being around thousands of people who were chanting "Home is here" and "We belong," it was reenergizing. It just showed the resiliency of immigrant communities. And it was just a beautiful moment.
[Baldwin:] I want to come back to your story in just a second. But, Caitlin, hammer home the gravity of the Supreme Court's decision.
[Caitlin Dickerson, Cnn Contributor:] This case is huge, and not in terms of numbers. Like you pointed out, there about 700,000 people who have DACA out of at least 11 million undocumented immigrants living in this country. And yet they're among the most powerful political symbols that you can imagine, not even just with regard to immigration, but generally speaking. I mean, this is a group of people in the United States who've experienced and enjoyed widespread support among Republicans and Democrats for years. There's a very high bar in order to get this status. More than 90 percent of them have jobs. They're doctors. They're lawyers. They are people who are embedded into the fabric of American communities and who have a whole lot of support. So there's a lot of emotional weight behind this decision.
[Baldwin:] On the emotional piece of this, Pierre, I read that you came from Peru. Your parents brought you here in 1998. So that means you were how old at the time?
[Berastain Ojeda:] I was 10.
[Baldwin:] You were 10. And so fast-forward to, you went to school, you now have work. Tell me just a bit about your life...
[Berastain Ojeda:] Sure.
[Baldwin:] ... and, prior to DACA, how much of a struggle emotionally it was for you.
[Berastain Ojeda:] Yes. I mean, I got DACA, as you mentioned, in 2012, when President Obama announced that his administration was offering this path for temporary path for people like me. I was at the time at Harvard. I was I had been there as an undergraduate, and I had started my graduate studies at the