President Donald Trump has not followed through on his campaign pledge to deport the so-called “Dreamers,” a departure from his otherwise hard-line stance against illegal immigrants, While that is welcome news, it remains unclear what will happen to those immigrants who entered the country illegally as children and hope to remain to continue building their lives.
The Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday that the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program will remain in place. On the same day, the fifth anniversary of the order establishing DACA, the Trump administration ended a sister program, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA). It would have given the same temporary protection to the parents of “Dreamers,” as well as others, but was never put in place because of court challenges.
While a Homeland Security statement Thursday said that DACA “will remain in effect,” the next day administration officials issued a clarification making it clear that while rescinding DAPA will not immediately affect the “Dreamers,” they remain in jeopardy.
“The future of the DACA program continues to be under review with the administration,” Jonathan Hoffman, assistant secretary for public affairs at Homeland Security, said in a statement. He noted that Trump has said the fate of those undocumented immigrants, many of whom are now college-aged, must be “handled with compassion and with heart.”
While the “Dreamers” do not have legal status, a guarantee of citizenship or any permanent protection, DACA gives them access to renewable, two-year work permits. Ending the program could lead to deportation of between 750,000 and 800,000 people whose identities are known by the federal government.
DACA was established by the Obama administration as a temporary measure to protect young undocumented immigrants while Congress crafted broader, permanent immigration guidelines. That has not happened, and Trump vowed to make immigration enforcement a top priority of his presidency. Besides promising to build a wall along the Mexican border, Trump pledged to immediately end the DACA program as part of his crackdown on undocumented immigrants already in the United States.
Despite the president’s not acting on that promise, allies of the Dreamers remain uneasy. “DACA has always been a modest though generous holding ground for those students, who are still at risk and who still have no pathway to become legal permanent residents,” Michael A. Olivas, a professor at the University of Houston and expert on immigration and higher-education law, told The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Trump’s failure to eliminate DACA drew criticism from organizations that favor more restrictive immigration policies, including the Federation for American Immigration reform in Washington,D.C., which tweeted Friday: “FAIR applauds end of DAPA. Trump must terminate DACA as well — both are “an illegal executive overreach.”
Academic leaders, on the other hand, are outspoken supporters of the “Dreamers.” Shortly after Trump was elected in November, the presidents of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges and the chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst joined about 200 of their colleagues in signing a statement supporting the program and urging that it be continued.
“Since the advent of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012, we have seen the critical benefits of this program for our students, and the highly positive impacts on our institutions and communities. DACA beneficiaries on our campuses have been exemplary student scholars and student leaders, working across campus and in the community. … To our country’s leaders, we say that DACA should be upheld, continued and expanded. We are prepared to meet with you to present our case. This is both a moral imperative and a national necessity. America needs talent — and these students, who have been raised and educated in the United States, are already part of our national community. They represent what is best about America, and as scholars and leaders they are essential to the future.”
It is time now for Congress to approve permanent protection for immigrants who as children were brought illegally into this country, and since have been lawful residents and productive members of their communities. We hope that the Massachusetts delegation steps up as leaders in the effort to keep the American dream of these young immigrants alive.