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Monica Ortiz Uribe

Artesia residents and activists from the New Mexico group "Somos un Pueblo Unido" gather outside an immigrant detention center to protest current immigration policy.

Immigrants around the region have mixed reactions to the long-awaited executive action on immigration that President Barack Obama announced Thursday.

Just a few minutes before Obama's address to the nation, a group of activists gathered for a candlelight vigil outside the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, New Mexico. Hundreds of immigrant women and children without documentation are detailed there.

Paikea Marcus, 7, said she’s unhappy that current immigration policy involves locking up kids.

"I just don't get it. Why they would want children that maybe could even teach us Spanish to be in jail?" she said.

Most immigrants detained in Artesia were part of a wave of Central Americans that grabbed the nation’s attention earlier this year when they overwhelmed immigration officials at the South Texas border. The crisis put increased pressure on the Obama administration.

In Thursday’s speech Obama outlined measures to boost resources at the southern border, do more to welcome highly skilled immigrants and give work permits to undocumented immigrants who have children legally in the country and no criminal history.

Kate Sheehy

Karla Stahlkopff Neyoy at Tucson's Southside Presbyterian Church. She expects to gain temporary relief under President Barack Obama's executive order.

In Tucson, after most of the crowd who gathered to listen to the President’s announcement left, a smaller group sat together at the Southside Presbyterian Church to pray about both the joys and sorrows of the news.

Karla Stahlkopff Neyoy had been anxiously wondering what the President would say.

"And thanks to God my family qualifies for deferred action. I know it left out many people, but maybe this will open another door for them," Neyoy said in Spanish.

Neyoy is one of about 3.5 million undocumented immigrants who have been living in the United States for more than five years and a have a child who is a U.S. citizen.

Neyoy’s husband had been in sanctuary at the church for a month, seeking protection from a deportation order. He was granted a one-year stay in June.

Neyoy said her family has done everything this country asks, to do the right thing and not make trouble.

Jude Joffe-Block

A crowd gathered at the Puente organization's headquarters in Phoenix to listen to Obama's executive action announcement.

She said she hopes that step by step, even if it takes time, that reform is on the horizon.

In Phoenix, some 200 immigrant activists gathered to watch Thursday's speech. Many had been on the front lines of the movement pushing the President to stop deportations. But their reaction to his actual announcement was bittersweet.

Yadira Garcia, 25, was in tears.

"I see so many faces. And yet I see so many other faces of other people that are very important to me that are not going to benefit from this," she said.

Including Garcia’s mother. The two came together to Arizona 18 years ago from Nogales, Mexico, when Garcia was a little girl.

Garcia got a work permit when Obama took executive action to protect certain young immigrants from deportation, but her mom has stayed in the shadows.

This most recent action will not help her mother get a work permit.

Jude Joffe-Block

Yadira Garcia, right, was disappointed that Obama's plan will not allow parents of DREAMers, like her mother, Maria Elena Apodaca,left, to get work permits.

"I was hoping that he would have taken a more courageous action, a more inclusive action," Garcia said.

These activists say they’ve won a partial victory, but they will keep working and advocating until they win relief for more immigrants.

They plan to rally Friday for that cause.