DACA’s future remains unclear

‘Dreamers’ say they’re skeptical of Trump move

In a state with one of the largest numbers of migrants known as “dreamers,” there was healthy skepticism over President Donald Trump’s decision to take no action on a policy that grants reprieves to people who arrived illegally in the U.S. as children.

President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program will stand — for now. DACA allows dreamers who have clean records to ask for temporary protection from deportation and, if approved, receive renewable two-year work permits.

Even Trump, who will ultimately decide the fate of the program and the future of thousands of young migrants, seemed unsure of his next steps.

At a Friday press conference, Trump said he has not made a final decision on immigration policies that affect dreamers. Trump’s remarks highlighted his sympathy and his suspicion.

“We’re going to show great heart,” he said. “DACA is a very, very difficult subject for me, I

will tell you.

“To me, it’s one of the most difficult subjects I have, because you have these incredible kids, in many cases — not in all cases. In some of the cases, they’re having DACA and they’re gang members and they’re drug dealers, too. But you have some absolutely incredible kids — I would say mostly — they were brought here in such a way — it’s a very, very tough subject.”

Dreamers in Arizona said the mixed messages make it tough to trust the president. Likewise, politicians on both sides of the aisle have struggled to predict the president’s next policy, executive order or tweet.

Reyna Montoya, 26, is among the thousands of young people who have waited on the administration’s decision regarding their fate. Since 2012, Montoya has qualified for DACA protections. She said the announcement from the Department of Homeland Security does not make her feel safe.

“Even though this might seem a victory for people like me who have DACA, we also have seen the reality — DHS is actually targeting everyone that is undocumented in the U.S., and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) says everyone is a target,” she said.

Montoya came to Arizona when she was 13. She said her father was seeking asylum from violence in Mexico. Her parents are still seeking legal immigration status.

Montoya, who grew up in Mesa and now lives in Gilbert, founded Aliento, a community organization focused on the well-being of undocumented youths. She meets with families who are scared but still fighting Trump’s policies on people who are in the country without legal status. “We are continuing to make sure people know their rights and are connected with community organizations, because, at the end of the day, that’s how we’re going to be safe: by knowing our rights and knowing how to protect our people,” she said.

Montoya said Trump’s policies and messages have emboldened those who are biased against immigrants. The announcement from the DHS, she said, does nothing to change that.

“I think that with Mr. Trump, the reality is he doesn’t see our humanity, he doesn’t see us as humans, he continues to use hateful rhetoric to describe our community,” she said. “I’d ask him, ‘Why do you do something that is not only hateful ... it’s also not going to move us forward as a nation, it takes us back 100 years?’ ”

The DHS issued the guidance ahead of a court-ordered deadline in a lawsuit written to halt Obama’s effort to expand the program to parents of dreamers and people with green cards.

The move fulfills part of a campaign promise that Trump had made to overturn two of Obama’s controversial memos on illegal immigration.

Thursday marked the judge’s deadline for the parties to set a timetable to resolve the case. Instead, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly announced that he has rescinded an Obama-era memo that sought to shield millions of parents of U.S. citizens and others from deportation.

The rescinded memo is the subject of an ongoing federal court battle waged by Texas and other states that opposed Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, program.

In a DHS statement, Kelly said his decision was based on “the nationwide injunction of the DAPA memorandum, the ongoing litigation, the fact that DAPA never took effect, and our new immigration enforcement priorities.”

However, Kelly took no action to reverse Obama’s 2012 memo that has granted reprieves from deportation to nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants who arrived as children.

Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, was a co-sponsor of Senate Bill 1070, Arizona’s much-debated immigration-enforcement law. Kavanagh said America will benefit from strict immigration and deportation policies. “I believe illegal immigrants need to self-deport and, if apprehended by ICE, should be deported immediately,” he said.

However, Kavanagh said he sees “socalled Dream Act kids” as an exception.

“I do not believe that anybody brought here at a young age by their parents (and) who do not have serious criminal records should be deported,” he said. “I don’t believe in visiting the sins of the parents on the children, but the adults who came here illegally, I would deport them.”

Kavanagh said that it may surprise people that a staunch supporter of a strict immigration-enforcement law would welcome dreamers and consider them Americans. “I would give them permanency and a path to citizenship,” he said. “Through no fault of their own, they were born and raised here and they’re Americanized. I don’t think it would be fair to throw them into a foreign country of which they know nothing.”

Still, Kavanagh said he does not believe Democrats would support a bipartisan effort to aid dreamers unless it included relief for all immigrants in the country without legal status. That’s something he said Republicans would never compromise on.

Without hope of a compromise, he said, Trump may choose to end the DACA program rather than continue it indefinitely. “It’s really hard to say,” he said. “On one hand, if there is no consensus in Congress to legalize the dreamers, then I don’t know if the president can let them stay in limbo.”

Phoenix immigration attorney Daniel Rodriguez said there is broad public support for securing a path to citizenship for dreamers. He is a former dreamer who now has legal status.

Rodriguez said young people who grew up like he did learned how to share their stories with teachers, friends, faith leaders and employers. Those interactions, he said, have humanized their experience in a country wrestling with immigration reform. “So I don’t think that it would be a good move on the part of the president to terminate this program,” he said. “However, that doesn’t mean the program will continue to run the same way that it’s been running. We see more and more cases of individuals being denied DACA, and also individuals with DACA still facing deportation.”

Rodriguez said he worries that the future is bleak for young migrants. “What I think this administration is doing, and that we have to be aware of, is that the program will remain in place for now, but they’re going to make it harder for people to get this type of relief,” he said. “You have to remember that, after all, this is a discretionary type of relief. They can deny you for any reason or no reason at all. And so we’re seeing more of that.”

Belen Sisa, a dreamer who studies political science and history at Arizona State University, said she has watched other dreamers be deported in recent months. Sisa drew national attention earlier this year when she posted on Facebook that she paid her taxes. She said she wanted to “bust the myth that immigrants don’t contribute and they don’t pay taxes to this country.”

Sisa said nothing the president does or says makes her feel safe. She urged the immigrant community to keep its guard up and to resist Trump’s policies and rhetoric. “There is nothing this administration has done to show us they have our best interest and that of the communities in mind,” she said.

Sisa said dreamers know better than anyone that no matter how hard they try to be upstanding, hardworking members of the community, there are some who will still view them as criminals.

“The reality is that even if we are ‘safe’ now, that is no guarantee that we will be safe in a few months, and it definitely doesn’t mean that the rest of our community and family members won’t be thrown under the bus and criminalized, especially as Homeland Security has rescinded DAPA,” she said.

David Jackson of USA TODAY and Kelsey Mo of The Republic contributed to this article.