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A Runner’s Olympic Dream Was in Doubt Because of His DACA Status

Luis Grijalva, who qualified to run for his native Guatemala, risked not being able to return to the United States if he left. On Monday, he got good news.

Luis Grijalva at a cross country race in Stillwater, Okla., in March.Credit...Shane Bevel/NCAA Photos, via Getty Images

When Luis Grijalva crossed the finish line second in the 5,000-meter race at the N.C.A.A. track and field championship meet last month, he had plenty to celebrate: a new personal best time, a national record in his native Guatemala and a ticket to the Olympic Games.

It should have been a joyous occasion. But the 13 minute, 13.14 second effort also created a crisis for Grijalva, who spent the last several weeks petitioning the United States government to allow him on a plane to Tokyo.

Grijalva is a beneficiary of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program introduced in 2012 by the Obama administration that protects about 650,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as young children from deportation. With few exceptions, DACA recipients who leave the country are not permitted to return. Like other unauthorized immigrants, they face a decade-long ban from re-entry after living in the country illegally for many years.

Grijalva and his lawyer asked U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that controls immigration, to let him leave the country briefly to compete for Guatemala in Tokyo. The agency can grant DACA recipients so-called advance parole, or permission to travel, if they provide a good reason related to education, employment or a humanitarian cause.

On Monday morning, Grijalva, a student at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, visited the government’s immigration office in Phoenix, hoping to plead his case one last time, and was feeling “pretty anxious.”

“To have an opportunity like this in Tokyo to represent Guatemala at the Olympic Games would mean the world to me,” he said.

After waiting at the office for hours, Grijalva said Monday afternoon that he was successful: he had been approved to travel to Tokyo in time for the preliminary 5,000-meter race on Aug. 3.

“It’s just a lot of emotions — excitement, just really happy,” said Grijalva, who plans to fly out on Friday. “Excited to run at the games and represent Guatemala, but also to leave the country and know I can return to the country safely.”

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Grijalva, right, competed at the N.C.A.A. Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Ore., in June.Credit...Chris Pietsch/The Register-Guard, via Associated Press

The immigration agency said it does not comment on individual cases. News of Grijalva’s situation was reported earlier by the running site LetsRun.com.

Grijalva’s family, he said, was struggling to make ends meet in Guatemala City. His parents, searching for a better life, moved with him and his two brothers to New York when he was 1. When he was 3 years old, his family moved to Fairfield, Calif., a town in the state’s Central Valley, where his father washed cars and worked at a nearby factory making cabinets. His father still lives there, while his mother and brothers have returned to Guatemala.

In Fairfield, Grijalva discovered that he loved to run — and he excelled at it. At Fairfield’s Armijo High School, he won state championships in cross-country and track and field, obliterating school records and attracting attention from college coaches. But despite being “pretty quick” in high school, Grijalva said he never thought qualifying for the Olympics was more than a fanciful dream.

Grijalva got a full-ride scholarship to Northern Arizona, where he is a senior, and helped the Lumberjacks win three N.C.A.A. cross-country championships in four years. After his big race in June, he turned professional, signing a contract with the shoe company Hoka One One.

“The opportunities I had coming to the United States provided me with so much more than I could ask for,” Grijalva said. Getting a degree and being paid to run are “probably things I never would have gotten if I had stayed in Guatemala.”

In the U.S., achieving the Olympic qualifying time of 13 minutes, 13-and-a-half seconds (which Grijalva beat by 0.36 seconds) was not enough to go to Tokyo: American runners also had to place in the top three at the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore., last month. But Grijalva did not have to worry about that; as the speediest 5,000-meter runner in the history of Guatemala, with a time more than 30 seconds faster than the next best athlete, he was confirmed to the country’s Olympic delegation several weeks ago.

Often, the U.S. immigration agency can take months to process travel requests, but Jessica Smith Bobadilla, Grijalva’s lawyer, said she remained optimistic throughout the process and had been in touch with members of Congress from Arizona about finding a way to get him to Tokyo. She had argued to the government that the Olympics is both employment-related and a humanitarian event.

“I’m overjoyed,” Smith Bobadilla said. “Can’t wait to see him run in the Games.”

DACA has been in legal jeopardy since its inception. Former President Donald J. Trump tried to end the protection granted by the program, until a federal judge ordered the government to reinstate it last December. But earlier this month, a different judge ruled the program was unlawful, a decision that is expected to be appealed by the Biden administration.

For Grijalva, one of many DACA recipients known as Dreamers, making it to the Olympics is the fulfillment of his own childhood dream.

“It would be pretty special to represent Guatemala at the Olympics,” he said. “To be able to represent my parents and my roots — that was where I started.”

Kellen Browning is a technology reporter in the Bay Area covering the video game industry and general tech news. He graduated from Pomona College. More about Kellen Browning

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: With U.S. Approval, a Runner’s Dream Remains Alive. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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