State delegation, advocates hail Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling on
Advocates applaud decision, urge a permanent solution
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, the state’s congressional delegation and immigration advocates praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to reject President Donald Trump’s efforts to end legal protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients.
The governor called Thursday’s ruling, which came on a 5-4 vote, “long overdue.”
“DACA recipients are our neighbors, our coworkers, and our friends, working to build lives for themselves in the only country they have ever known,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement.
DACA recipients were, as children, brought to the country illegally or through visitor’s visas that later expired.
Yazmin Irazoqui is one of those Dreamers. The University of New Mexico School of Medicine graduate testified last year at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing about protections for undocumented immigrant youth.
“I celebrate with all those who have
been living in uncertainty and fear for the past several years,” Irazoqui said in a release from the New Mexico Dream Team. Brought to the U.S. when she was 3 under a visitor’s visa, she urged lawmakers to come up with a permanent solution.
U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., said in a statement there are 17,000 in the state who depend on the program “to study, work, and contribute to the only country they call home.” And U.S. Rep. Xochitl Torres Small said many were essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., hailed the ruling for those “thrown into turmoil since President Trump ordered an end to DACA.”
Luján, Torres Small and fellow Democratic Rep. Deb Haaland sponsored the Dream and Promise Act, which passed the House last year. The legislation would grant legal status to DACA recipients and provide a path to citizenship.
Heinrich and U.S. Sen. Tom Udall are calling for the Senate to put the bill on the floor for a vote.
“It is long past time that the Trump administration and the Senate Republican majority stop holding Dreamers hostage and pass a path to citizenship,” Udall said in a news release.