Would-be Dreamers sue for status
Houston-area immigrants file suit as Trump freezes out 86,000 Texans eligible for DACA
WASHINGTON — The number of Dreamers in Texas could nearly double if the Trump administration begins accepting applications for the federal program that offers them legal protections and work authorizations.
The Supreme Court last month blocked President Donald Trump’s 2017 order to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects from deportation people brought as children to the U.S. by their families without legal authorization. Many of the so-called Dreamers have known no other home than the U.S.
Now, after nearly four years of waiting for the final ruling, dozens of Houston-area immigrants are suing to force the White House to take their applications.
By at least one estimate, some 86,000 Texans are eligible for the program, in addition to the 106,000 Dreamers in Texas who have already enrolled. The backlog has grown over the past four years, as more of the children have graduated from high school but were not allowed to apply.
A federal judge in Maryland earlier this month ordered the administration to start taking new applications but set no date for the reopening. A message on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ website says the agency is “not accepting requests from individuals who have never before been granted deferred action under DACA.”
During a Friday court hearing in Maryland, government attorneys said the message on the website is out of date and USCIS is actually “holding” applications it re
ceives while it determines the next steps. The Texas lawsuit, meanwhile, says USCIS is rejecting applications.
One of the plaintiffs in the Texas case is Anahi Lagunas, a 19-year-old nursing student at Lone Star College. She remembers first hearing about DACA when she was in middle school. Her parents did not let her apply as she graduated from high school because they were afraid of what might happen once the government learned of her immigration status.
“They thought by giving my info out, that (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) could get that info and come to my doorstep and just take me away,” Lagunas said. “They were afraid I was going to be taken away from them.”
‘Basically being held hostage’
Lagunas has lived in Houston since her parents emigrated from Mexico when she was about 3 months old. She has a high school diploma and is enrolled in college — two major qualifications for the program, which is also open to nongraduates who served in the U.S. military.
The program also requires immigrants to have come to the country before the age of 16.
It’s unclear if or when the administration plans to reopen it. A spokesperson for USCIS said only that “the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice are reviewing the Supreme Court’s DACA decision.”
Trump has said in recent days his administration is preparing “a big executive order” on immigration that would include DACA, though it’s unclear what that means.
Lagunas and others in her situation have heard such pledges from Trump since fall 2017, as he has repeatedly said he is working with Congress to protect them.
That hasn’t happened. As Trump again promises action, and some Republican senators — including U.S. Sen. John Cornyn — have said Congress
“He always promises a lot, and we have yet to see what he’s going to deliver.”
Cesar Espinosa, executive director of FIEL Houston, on President Donald Trump
needs to act, advocates for the immigrants say the administration has no justification for refusing to accept new applications.
The potential DACA recipients in Texas are “basically being held hostage,” said Cesar Espinosa, executive director of FIEL, an immigrant-run advocacy group in Houston that is leading the lawsuit.
“Texas is No. 2 in the nation for DACA applicants. We know there’s a large need here in the state of Texas to get this program going and to get folks the benefits,” he said. “Folks have been needing this program for their entire lives, when you think about it.”
Nationally, more than 640,000 immigrants are protected by the program. The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., estimates as many as 682,000 more could qualify.
A ‘very major’ order?
Many would-be Dreamers, including Lagunas, are preparing for jobs in essential industries, as some 200,000 work in essential fields across the country. In Texas, as many as 14,000 worked in fields such as health care, food service, farming and transportation in 2017, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute.
That included more than 2,400 working in health care and health care support fields.
“It is unconscionable for the Trump Administration to deny deportation protections to hardworking people who came to this county as children, hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who are serving as essential workers on the front lines of this pandemic,” said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
“The Trump administration’s continuous lawbreaking is no longer shocking, but openly defying the Supreme Court and ignoring a federal judge’s order to accept new DACA applications violates the principle of judicial review and the separations of power,” Castro said. “These checks and balances are fundamental to our constitutional system of governance.”
Conservatives have long argued that former President Barack Obama violated those checks and balances when he took executive action to create DACA in the first place. When Trump moved to scrap the program, his attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, called Obama’s action “an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws” and “an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch.”
Now the president says he’s gearing up to issue a “very major” immigration order of his own within the next few weeks, claiming the Supreme Court’s ruling that blocked him from ending DACA last month gives him the power to do so.
Trump said during a “Fox News Sunday” interview this month that he would replace DACA with “something much better.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere has said the administration is “working on an executive order to establish a merit-based immigration system to further protect U.S. workers.” Deere has said that Trump “has long said he is willing to work with Congress on a negotiated legislative solution to DACA,” which he said could include citizenship but not “amnesty.”
In the past, Trump’s offers to reopen the program were contingent upon receiving funding for his border wall from Congress.
“He always promises a lot, and we have yet to see what he’s going to deliver,” said Espinosa, who added that he’s worried it will be “something so restrictive” that few can apply, such as a requirement that applicants have a four-year college degree.
‘Another helping hand’
Congress appears as stuck as ever on the issue. The Democratic-controlled House passed a bill last year that would make DACA law and offer Dreamers a path to citizenship. When Senate Democrats attempted to bring it up for a vote earlier this month, however, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz blocked it, calling it an attempt at offering “amnesty” to those who entered the country illegally.
“Today’s Democratic Party, their priority is on people here illegally and not on American workers,” Cruz said. “Not on keeping American workers safe.”
Lagunas said she is optimistic that Dreamers will prevail and the administration will begin taking applications again. Either way, she plans to transfer to a four-year college and keep working toward her nursing degree with the hope that she can one day put it to use.
She said she is eager to get her degree so she can help the city that has been her home for as long as she can remember, as she hears reports about nurses and doctors overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic.
“It urges me to pursue my career even more because I can be another helping hand to them,” the 19-year-old Houstonian said.