U.S. phasing out ‘Dreamer’ status
DACA protection: Hundreds of thousands are vulnerable
President Trump’s decision to phase out protections for about 800,000 immigrants who entered the U.S. as children fulfilled a campaign promise while prompting alarm from the young people often called “Dreamers,” whose deportations could begin as soon as March unless Congress steps in.
The president’s announcement that he was ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, ended months of speculation and parsing of his sometimes cryptic statements on the issue. On Tuesday, Trump said he had “great love” for DACA recipients
even as he rolled back the program created in 2012 by former President Barack Obama.
But it set in motion what may be months or years of conflict, with Trump inviting lawmakers to act and some state attorneys general, including Xavier Becerra of California, warning they were poised to sue the administration if the young immigrants were no longer granted work permits and protection from deportation.
DACA recipients, who have been in limbo since Trump took office, said in interviews Tuesday they were anguished as they considered uncertain futures. They have been in the country for more than a decade, and many have no meaningful connection to their countries of birth. Some do not speak any language except English.
The administration will wind down the program over the next few years by not accepting any new requests for DACA, while allowing those with current two-year work permits to use them until they expire, officials said.
Those whose protections were set to end before March 5 will be able to apply for a renewal by Oct. 5. After March 5, tens of thousands of people could be subject to deportation as the first batch of permits expires.
At a news conference in Washington, D.C., Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the administration was forced to rescind the program because it was an “unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch.” Nine states led by conservative attorneys general had threatened to sue to halt DACA, and the administration said they had a winning case.
Trump called on Congress to take on the issue, saying in a statement, “We will resolve the DACA issue with heart and compassion — but through the lawful democratic process — while at the same time ensuring that any immigration reform we adopt provides enduring benefits for the American citizens we were elected to serve.”
The decision to cut a program popular with many Americans — a poll administered by NBC News and Survey Monkey and released last week found that 64 percent of people backed it — marked the latest front in a wider immigration crackdown favored by Trump’s staunchest supporters. It was met with condemnation by many California politicians, including some Republicans, as well as business leaders and immigrant advocates.
The impact could be profound in California, where close to 223,000 of the more than 787,000 DACA recipients lived when they were approved. León Rodríguez, who headed up the federal agency that administered DACA from 2014 to 2016, said the loss of more than 200,000 Californians who “fall out of the legal economy” would, over time, result in not only a decrease in workers but a drop in consumption.
“It’s going to have a terrible impact on the economy in California,” he said.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, called the decision “a deeply shameful act of political cowardice.”
Among those weighing in was Obama, who posted a statement on Facebook. “Ultimately, this is about basic decency,” he wrote. “This is about whether we are a people who kick hopeful young strivers out of America, or whether we treat them the way we’d want our own kids to be treated.”
But Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from Costa Mesa (Orange County), was among those who supported the decision. He said that while “we may sympathize” with DACA recipients, “we in Congress must work to prevent such cynical loopholes from being created again by executive fiat.”
The program offered protection from deportation and a two-year work permit for people who had come to the country before the age of 16, had lived in the U.S continuously since 2007, and were in school or had graduated. Any felony or significant misdemeanor convictions disqualified applicants.
Now, unless Congress acts, recipients will have their work permits taken away when they expire, and will be forced to either return to their country of birth — typically Mexico — or make difficult choices such as trying to live under the radar and working lower-paying off-the books jobs that don’t require citizenship or a work permit.
Trump said DACA recipients will not be considered priorities for deportation unless they commit crimes, but his administration has deported people with clean records. A White House memo obtained by CNN states that Homeland Security “urges DACA recipients” to use the time they have left to “prepare for and arrange their departure.”
One person considering his next steps on Tuesday was Gabe Belmonte, a 35-year-old San Jose engineer whose son’s mother is also a DACA recipient and whose work permit runs out next September. He watched a few minutes of Sessions’ news conference on YouTube, then went on a walk at his networking company’s campus for 20 minutes to clear his head.
He reflected on his life before DACA, how he barely got by working manual labor and restaurant jobs after he graduated from San Jose State University with an engineering degree. He was depressed for years because he didn’t know where his life would go.
Then he thought of his life after DACA — a six-figure job in the field he studied, the opportunity to provide a home for his green-card-holding parents who had lost theirs in the recession, and the ability to better care for his 6-year-old son, who is a citizen by birth. He thought of how he’d paid more than $100,000 in taxes since he got DACA.
As he walked around the campus, watching his colleagues arrive in their cars, he thought about how they were the same at work, but somehow so different.
“What’s going to happen to my parents’ house? What’s going to happen to my son? What is going to happen to my job? If anything happens to me and his mother, what am I going to do?” he said.
Belmonte has been in the country for 28 years, since he was brought in as a 7-year-old from Mexico. He has never been back.
DACA recipient Silvia Perez, a 26-year-old architect for a firm in Oakland, said she was already pondering her worst-case scenario — selling her possessions and leaving the country for Mexico so she could continue to provide for her family. She came to the U.S. at age 8, graduated from UC Berkeley in 2013, and has never been back to Mexico. She has protection until January and will apply for renewal before October.
She said she took offense to Sessions’ argument Tuesday that DACA recipients took jobs from Americans.
“I did not take anyone’s job. I worked — through school and now. I’ve earned everything that I have,” she said.
Another recipient, Karina Camarena Heredia, a 20-yearold UC Berkeley junior studying to be a doctor, said she has no memory of her life in Mexico, which ended when she was 5.
“I may not have been born here, but I was definitely raised here,” she said. “They’re trying to send me back to a place I don’t call home.”