Dreamers walk out of school, call for immigration reform
Shortly after 1 p.m. Thursday, Dunia Dominguez, a junior at Santa Fe South High School, walked out of her school’s front doors followed by hundreds of her classmates chanting support for immigration reform.
“I walk out of school for a clean DREAM Act for my friends, family and some of the teachers at Santa Fe South,” said Dominguez, speaking into a bullhorn on a hill next to the south Oklahoma City school.
Dominguez, who is undocumented but has lived in the United States since she was 3 months old, said the announcement two months ago by President Donald Trump that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would end next year inspired her to protest.
DACA provides deportation relief and a path to employment for nearly 800,000 undocumented youths across the country.
Dominguez was joined by her classmates who marched out of school to advocate not just for DACA protections, but also for the passage of a clean DREAM Act in Congress, which would offer a path to citizenship.
“There’s less than a month before (Congress) goes to recess, so we really want to have something happen before December, before they go recess for the holidays,” said Jessica Vasquez of DREAM ACT Oklahoma, a local advocacy group. “They have been sitting on this issue for years; we just need action now.”
Vasquez, who played the role of emcee during the rally that followed Thursday’s walkout, said walkouts had been planned at more than 30 schools and universities across the country, each with the goal of calling on Congress to act as a March 2018 expiration of DACA approaches.
U.S. Sen. James Lankford introduced legislation in September to provide a
15-year path to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants.
“These are kids who literally do not have a home anywhere,” Lankford said when his bill was announced.
But Vasquez, who has traveled to Washington to advocate for immigration reform, said Lankford’s bill will leave out hundreds of thousands of young people who came to the U.S. when they were 16 or 17 years old.
“DACA was never a solution; it was always just a temporary fix,” Vasquez said. “We have always been fighting for more.”
Thursday’s walkout and rally was peaceful and, while not officially sanctioned by the school, several teachers stood in the crowd to show support.
Santa Fe South is a charter school located in the Plaza Mayor at the Crossroads mall and has a large Hispanic student population.
Hispanic students comprise more than half of the enrollment in Oklahoma City public schools, and while the district suspects most are documented, there are a large number of students who receive DACA.
“I have considered the United States my home,” Dominguez said. “It is all I have known.”