(CNN) Emmanuel Diaz was shocked when he saw the news flash onto his cell phone screen.
A text from a friend told him the Supreme Court decision he'd been waiting to hear for months had finally come in. Justices had blocked the Trump administration's attempt to end the program that protects him and hundreds of thousands of other so-called Dreamers from deportation.
And Diaz couldn't believe it.
The 25-year-old in Savannah, Georgia, responded with an emoji of a brain exploding.
"My mind was blown when I found out," he said. "It's a giant relief."
Across the country, the young undocumented immigrants protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are reacting to the news with a mix of emotions -- relishing their legal victory, but also bracing themselves for the possibility that officials could find a new way to put the Obama-era program back on the chopping block.
"We're not in the clear yet," said Leezia Dhalla, a DACA recipient and press director for the FWD.us advocacy group. "The Trump administration can still try to terminate the DACA program. Are they going to do that in an election year? That's a big question."
Here's a look at what several DACA recipients told CNN about how they're feeling and what's next:
The last time CNN spoke with Caroline Fung Feng, she was in the middle of 230-mile march from New York to Washington so she could be in the nation's capital for the Supreme Court arguments last November.
When she heard of the justices' decision on Thursday, Fung Feng says she thought of that journey and years of advocacy efforts she and other DACA recipients have been involved in.
"It was worth it," said Fung Feng, 31, who'd feared the court would deliver a different result.
"At first it took a while to sink in -- Is this real? ... I can't put into words how happy I am and how relieved I feel about the whole thing," she said.
If the Trump administration does try again to end DACA, Fung Feng says she and other advocates will be prepared.
"They'll try to find a different way, but we will be ready for it. We will be ready to stop him and his anti-immigrant, white supremacist agenda. We'll stop him," she said. "We know that when we organize, we win. And this victory that we have today is proof of that."
Angel Oaxaca-Rivas, an admissions counselor in Denver, Colorado, also described Thursday's news as a relief.
The 25-year-old said many things in his life have been in limbo since the Trump administration's 2017 announcement that it was ending the program.
"If my life is on a rotating two-year basis, I can't commit to so many things," he said.
"That's where there's relief, in the sense that I feel like there's going to have to be due process if anything is to change," Oaxaca-Rivas said. "That in and of itself makes me feel safer."
But Oaxaca-Rivas said some of the major life decisions he's been putting off -- like buying a house and pursuing a master's degree -- will have to remain on hold until the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
"We'll figure that out come November," he said.
Dhalla, 30, described the Supreme Court ruling as an important step.
"This is a victory that has truly changed my life. ... There's so much more work that needs to be done. But today is a victory," Dhalla said. "I'm going to take today as a day of celebration."
Dhalla, who came to the United States from Canada when she was 6 years old and grew up in San Antonio, Texas, said she plans to keep pushing for Congress to take action.
"I came to the US a quarter century ago," she said. "I never imagined I would still be fighting for the opportunity to become an American citizen 25 years later."
Luz Chavez, 22, was with a group of demonstrators standing on the Supreme Court steps when the decision came down Thursday.
"It's exhilarating," she said.
A student at Trinity Washington University who came to the US from La Paz, Bolivia, Chavez said DACA provided her with a lifeline after she learned she was undocumented as a teenager. And federal court decisions over the past few years keeping the program alive gave her hope. But waiting for the Supreme Court's decision was nerve-wracking, she said.
"Now I can sleep," she said, "knowing I'll still have my job, I'll still be able to provide for my family. But this is the beginning of the long run."
Jin Park, a second-year student at Harvard Medical School, said Thursday's decision provided some relief but didn't give him the permanence he's hoping for.
Park said he had to strike a difficult balance as a medical student with DACA. On the one hand, he said, he wants to uphold his oath to his patients and be committed to them, but he's struggled with the possibility he could be deported and forced to leave his patients behind. In the end, Park said, that's a problem Congress has to help solve.
"That question still remains. As a country we'll have to reckon what legislative solution we'll need to apply for me and other DACA recipients," he said. "This is one small advance."
Diaz, who's working as an apprentice for a financial planner, said he's been on edge waiting for word of the court's decision.
"It's been crazy, just being glued to a screen and always having something set up to where I get an alert if anyting happens (with DACA), always looking on the internet. Especially now that the time was closing in on whether they were going to say something on it," he said.
Now he hopes the Supreme Court decision will help his career, even though he's worried the administration could try to rescind DACA again.
"When I started my apprenticeship with the financial planner, he mentioned he had some concerns about how long I'd be able to stay in the country because of the way DACA was going," Diaz said. "Now that I know it's going to hold up, I feel like I have a more secure future."
But first things first. Diaz told CNN he was getting ready to do one important thing: Call his mom and celebrate.