Donald Trump said that Congress should act on a DACA fix by March 5, 2018, but that’s an arbitrary date. Thousands of DACA recipients have already fallen out of status, and if Congress does not pass a clean DREAM Act soon, 1,400 young Americans, like University of Texas at El Paso student Melissa Martinez, will begin losing their work permits and protection from deportation every single day. In an op-ed, Martinez tells Republican Congressman Will Hurd why he must support a clean DREAM Act and Dreamers like her:
My family and I migrated to Texas from Mexico when I was five years old, and the Lone Star State--Congressman Hurd’s district specifically--has been my home for 17 years. For decades, Texas has been known as a welcoming state for undocumented immigrants, as it was the first to allow Dreamers to pay in-state tuition and receive state aid for higher education.
Our proximity to the Mexican border has also meant that our families tend to be of mixed-status, that many of us have family members who are both undocumented and citizens. If anyone can understand how immigrants make Texas a better place to live, it should be Congressman Hurd, whose district includes much of the Texas-Mexico border and includes more than 4,700 DACA-eligible Dreamers.
Just weeks after President Trump ended DACA, Congressman Hurd said, “there are 800,000 young men and women who have only known America, and they should have legal status to stay here. I think this is something we can get done.”
“If this is something he thinks can get done, why has he not signed on to the Dream Act?” Martinez asks. In the state, Republican Congressman Joe Barton supports the legislation, along with the entire Democratic delegation. “If he’s serious about protecting people like me and my brother, and millions of Dreamers who wish for nothing more than to contribute to the country we call home, he must sign on to the Dream Act now. Our community cannot afford inaction.”
In Arizona, Ellie Perez writes that she has always considered Phoenix her home. The DACA recipient arrived to the U.S. without permission when she was just four years old and was spurred to activism following Arizona enacting notorious “show me your papers” legislation. She has fought for her family and community since, and because of DACA, it was “possible for people like me to sleep easy at night without the fear of being deported the next day.” But, then “fast-forward to 2017”:
I close my eyes and see myself standing in room full of other Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients as the Trump administration announced the end to the program for immigrants like me. He said he would treat us “with heart,” but here we were, confronted with his heartless decision. He said he “loved” us, but here we were, cast out by his hatred.
I relive that moment almost daily. First as a painful memory, but now as a personal reminder of why I'm fighting to change my community.
For DACA recipients and their loved ones, the terrifying reality is that our days of protection under this program are limited. My own permit expires in February 2019. At the moment, hundreds of thousands of other Americans like myself are now lost in limbo, waiting for action from a Republican Congress that is unwilling to bring a clean DREAM Act to a vote.
“We must rise, organize, and take action,” Perez writes. “I urge you, your friends, and your family to get involved in the fight to protect DREAMers. My days under DACA’s protection are numbered. But my commitment to my community and country is limitless, and I will fight to the very end. I ask you to join the fight and demand action for fellow Americans.”
In another op-ed, Lorella Praeli, herself a formerly undocumented youth and now U.S. citizen, writes that the horrific, week-long detainment of 10-year-old Rosamaria Hernandez following emergency gallbladder surgery shows how urgent it is that Congress acts now on a clean DREAM Act to protect immigrant youth from an unshackled mass deportation force:
The urgency to resolve young immigrants’ status becomes clearer and more pressing every day. Despite President Trump’s false reassurancesthat Dreamers would have “nothing to worry about,” we are already seeing DACA recipients and other young immigrants facing renewed attacks.
The Trump administration was denying DACA renewal applications even before it announced the end of the program. Take the case of Jessica Colotl, a 28-year-old from Atlanta who has lived in the U.S. since age 11 and graduated with academic distinction from high school and college in Georgia. Twice this year, a federal judge has stepped in to restore Jessica’s wrongfully denied DACA status, which the Trump Administration took away arbitrarily even though the Department of Homeland Security had granted her DACA twice previously and her circumstances remained unchanged.
Or take the case of Jesús Arreola, a 23-year-old resident of the Los Angeles area, who has lived in the U.S. since age one. Jesús worked at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, was an Uber and Lyft driver, and is the primary caregiver for his parents and siblings. DHS granted him DACA status in 2012, 2014, and again in 2016. Despite his valid DACA status, federal immigration authorities arrested him in February while he was driving a customer and falsely accused him of human smuggling. Even though an immigration judge promptly rejected the government’s bogus claims, and Jesús was never charged with any crime, DHS revoked his DACA.
“He is far from the only case of a wrongful DACA revocation,” Praeli continues, “a practice the ACLU is challenging in a class action lawsuit … Congress should not give into the un-American agenda of deporting Dreamers and should instead take immediate action to protect them, along with their friends and families. Congress should attach these protections to must-pass legislation before the holidays, as Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and others have been calling for.”
According to one poll, nearly 90 percent of Americans want immigrant youth to stay, including “three-quarters of Republicans and conservatives, 86 and 87 percent of independents and moderates and 97 and 96 percent of Democrats and liberals.” You don’t get much more consensus than that. In Congress, leaders like Nancy Pelosi firmly believe that if the DREAM Act came up, it could pass. A clean DREAM Act deserves a chance. As we celebrate with our families this Thanksgiving, let’s remember the hundreds of thousands of young people and families who also deserve a chance to stay together.