By Rosa Flores and Kevin Conlon, CNN

Boston (CNN) As Blanca Morales walks the hallowed halls of Harvard Medical School, she ponders her humble roots and how she might be forced to choose between her parents and her dream of becoming a doctor.

It's a dream that started as a girl in her parents' tiny studio apartment in Santa Ana, California, while she did her homework at the kitchen table. She remembers her mom coming home, covered in mud from picking strawberries, screaming at her siblings to keep it down -- so little Blanca could study.

Today, her dream is within reach, but it could mean the ultimate betrayal: She gets to stay in the United States legally and practice medicine, while her parents get deported to Mexico.

"It would be difficult to go on," Morales says as she breaks down in tears.

Morales and three fellow Harvard Medical School peers -- Dalia Larios, Alma Oñate and Anthony Tucker-Bartley -- have become the poster children for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program as the immigration debate grips legislators in Washington.