Table 4.

Representative themes and sub-themes.

Theme	Sub-themes
Economic Need During the COVID-19 Pandemic	Housing insecurity “The economic impact to the family was immediate, two weeks loss of income for my dad (barber) and then half hours gone from my mom’s schedule (waitress), but we had some savings… And it was only going to last until May… and so of course that [shelter in place] was extended… the concern about whether we’d actually be able to stay in the apartment because we did not have the funding.” (Latinx participant) “My apartment complex receiving notice of like, the management still insisted on collecting rent, even after the eviction moratorium… I look up the management and the person who owns it and then found a whole lengthy history of like him… just parading Trump… and there’s like, even like a page of him on an anti-eviction mapping project… I did not want to [fight this]… [but] also considering like, ‘Okay, well, you know, mom is undocumented, you are kinda in the process of like getting your status adjusted, so yeah, no, maybe not right now.’ Part of me is just like, what if they just ended up manipulating my mom’s [information] because we had to do background checks, what if they… ratted us out?” (Asian participant) Food insecurity “I have a lot of friends that are also freelancers are working like two or three minimum wage… sometimes I will buy my friend a meal when I can because I just got this gig, but other times, I do not know when my next meal is” (Asian participant) “There’s no rice, there’s no beans, there’s no tortillas like everything was just gone… as a graduate student you kind of buy the cheaper stuff like bulk rice and stuff like that… There was a time when they did not even have eggs and so I was like, I do not know what I’m going to buy.” (Latinx participant)
A Climate of Burden: Existing while undocumented	Learning costs “I feel like I’ve always been on a flight or fight mode-like I’m on survival mode, actually. And I feel like my parents have always been that way… We’ve always lived in fear… We always have to be extra cautious and make sure we follow the rules by the letter… We’ve always done a really good job at ‘if we are sick, we do like home remedies-we do not seek for professional help’.” (Latinx participant) “So I knew about my status back in elementary school, like pretty early on. My parents wanted me to know that I should not cause trouble to get the police involved… so growing up I never trusted the police because of my immigration status and that just continued on to now.” (Asian participant) Psychological costs “I feel that as an immigrant, undocumented person-being a brown, Latina… just physically I feel like I’m a target. I’m a walking target so anything that I do will be used against me… They’re not a symbol of safety for me-they are a threat.” (Latinx participant) “In my break between finishing work and going to class, I thought, ‘Hey, I should, I’m near the beach, like I should go run from work to the beach, and then back to work, get ready go off to class.’ So I decided to throw on a hoodie… within two or three blocks of my workplace… this cop pulls up next to me… and the officer says, ‘You know, you really should not be around this neighborhood anymore.’ He must not have liked what I looked like for that neighborhood and I never went on a run after that-I mean, anywhere.” (Latinx participant) I’m this transition period [of adjusting my immigration status]… you do not want to like screw up anything… So that definitely adds that little like anxiety and fear I guess about what might happen to me if I were to get arrested for any reason and then in the process they turn you into ICE. (Asian participant) Compliance costs How am I gonna save up $500 and I heard that they are trying to increase fees on certain things, I do not know if DACA was one of them. It’s like if they increase the fees like how am I gonna do that? You know, on top of what I already have on my plate, you know? (Latinx participant) To cough up 500 bucks [for DACA renewals] each year-that’s a pretty big blow, and having to renew every year means you have to take time off every year to get your biometrics… there’s gonna be a lot more applications… It’s going to slow down the renewal process, because so many people are going at the same time. (Asian participant)
The Impact of Burden in applying for DRAI	Collective scarcity and individual disempowerment They [My parents] feel like they cannot take away from others… Like they do not feel the need to take from the government… it was always like “I do not want to take from others if I can, if I can work for it myself… even under these kinds of circumstances.” (Latinx participant) “They [My parents] did not know where to get that help or like how to apply for it… they mentioned other people need it more than they do… They did not follow through [in] getting aid.” (Latinx participant) Fear of Enforcement “I think one of the first questions asked [about] household income… and that always freaks my parents out because of their immigration status… Even though I think that the format or a disclaimer said something like citizenship is not required. She just was so fearful of whatever consequences might come, it’s not worth the money they try to offer, like, ‘I’ll just scrape by some other way’.” (Latinx participant)
Administrative Burdens in the DRAI Application Process	Intake Logistics “You need to know which button you got to hit, you know? And I think there was like, three or two, of those voice recordings. And you need to get through all of them just to, at the end, getting a busy tone on the other side.” (Asian participant) “I was kind of getting anxious about that because first come first serve… I do not know if there’s enough money to go around for everyone. So on the third or fourth day I just had an idea to maybe call right after lunchtime and that’s when they worked… The worker was very helpful, very empathetic. And the process itself took me about like 30 to 45 min. So I can see like how overworked they are. Like one person can take maybe two people at a time, two households at a time per hour, and they work eight hours, that’s only 16 people per day per worker.” (Asian participant) Language access “My Tita and I tried the Tagalog application, but you could not get through because I think it wasn’t staffed… she would always get forwarded to voicemail. So she ended up calling the English hotline. Yeah that one was also like, also kind of slammed but we are able to get through eventually.” (Asian participant) “At first I put that in Spanish. And then I wanted to cheat the system and just make it English. I just put English… And then I got through, and I did it for both my parents, but it was like the last week of the program. (Latino participant)
Potential Mediators of Administrative Burden	The role of young adults “When you are working with like elders and middle-aged folks, you are just like, wow, I taught someone today how to use zoom that feels like a big accomplishment.” (Asian participant) “I thought I told her something in Korean that I translated it in my head, but the way she understood what I was talking about was very different… we did not receive it [housing grant], but if we did receive it… I’m pretty sure it would have been delayed-I mean there was a whole section that was filled incorrectly.” (Asian participant) The role of trusted community “The way that I share information is word of mouth and personal conversations… So now that all these restrictions have been happening… You do not see as many people, you do not talk to as many people, so I just feel there’s people out there missing out on the information, on resources… I’m pretty sure a lot of people did not know about monetary aid.” (Latinx participant) “I think we really rely on building our community on grocery markets! We do actually have all of our livelihoods around one single grocery market. You know, your bulletin board is out there, you meet your community members there, right? And the fact that we aren’t able to do that, I think points to a lot of gaps by how we serve people here.” (Asian participant) “We still check up on each other [online]. It definitely has helped become like a support group, and more of like a community and family. Now more than ever, I think, even though we are like distant, we still try to keep in touch with each other. So it definitely has helped, like, kind of address that need for us to interact with each other.” (Asian participant) The role of government “I do not know how I feel about federal right now… I keep it local, so I just look up LA county resources or California, that’s what I trust right now to be honest, the federal government is shady” (Latinx participant). “I feel comfortable. I do not think that they are there to [say], ‘He’s sick, he’s undocumented, he needs to get deported.’ I do not feel like that’s their job. Their job is literally trying to stop the spread, so I do not feel threatened by their existence.” (Latinx participant) “From being undocumented… there’s always that fear that pushes you to manage and try to understand what the situation is really like. The motivation behind the distribution of funding from the governor… there’s likely to be some regulation around it and explicit. It’s a public entity, you are allowed to ask for things, for information so there’s more access… than there would be if a private company comes in… and their role and their intentions and their motivations are completely vague. They’re not visible and the process under which they undergo is actually completely set up by them. It’s much more ambiguity, much less transparency.” (Latinx participant)