NORTHAMPTON — A contingent of young local activists headed to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday to join others from across the country protesting in support of protections for undocumented Americans.
The demonstrations are largely in support of the DREAM Act — legislation that would protect hundreds of thousands of undocumented young people who are at risk of deportation after President Donald Trump’s administration ended an Obama-era executive order that shielded them from deportation.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, will ultimately be phased out on March 5, 2018, and many protesters are asking lawmakers to do anything they can to pass a more permanent protection soon.
“We’ve seen it fail over and over and over again, and we do think there is a chance this time around for Democrats and Republicans to get together and address something that’s so urgent,” Hampshire College student Eduardo Samaniego said of the DREAM Act, which has failed to pass since it was first introduced as a bill in 2001. “This is a national emergency.”
There are currently almost 800,000 beneficiaries of DACA, 7,934 of whom are residents of Massachusetts, according to the most recent data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The DREAM Act and DACA aren’t the only things that the local activists are pushing for, however. Smith College first-year student Julieta Rendon-Mendoza, who is herself a DACA beneficiary, said she hopes lawmakers will eventually move beyond the limited scope of DACA.
“I’m determined to create momentum for the protection of all immigrants,” Rendon-Mendoza said. That includes protections for all those not included in DACA, like her own parents, who moved to Washington state from Mexico when Rendon-Mendoza was 2 years old.
“It’s not just an immigrant’s battle, it’s about fighting institutional racism,” Rendon-Mendoza said of the fight for immigrant rights. All people should care about those suffering horrible working conditions and living in the shadows to pick the food they eat every day, for example.
Rendon-Mendoza also drew attention to U.S. foreign policy, which she said in so many cases has directly caused waves of migration to the United States, whether as a result of U.S.-funded civil wars in Central America or the North American Free Trade Agreement that undercut many small-scale Mexican farmers.
The group of Pioneer Valley activists also will push for the extension of a humanitarian program known as temporary protected status, which the Trump administration has also begun dismantling.
For immigrants from Honduras, Nicaragua and Haiti, that status expires in March, and for other countries like El Salvador, the status expires later in 2018. Rose Bookbinder, a lead organizer with the Pioneer Valley Workers Center, said that status being revoked will affect many local immigrants.
The local group, which has organized with the Pioneer Valley Workers Center, hope to visit the offices of Massachusetts legislators to press them to protect immigrants.
Samaniego, who himself is undocumented but just missed the age cutoff for DACA, said he and others are calling on Democrats to insist that deportation relief be a part of an end-of-year government funding bill, and to use the leverage of a government shutdown to get that legislation passed.
With a Friday deadline approaching for that spending legislation, however, prominent Democrats like Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, have said they won’t vote to shut down the government over protections for the so-called “dreamers.”
“We’ve seen it before, where Democrats aren’t willing to go the whole way to stand up for dreamers,” Samaniego said. “We hope that this time around they do what is right.”
The group will first visit the office of U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, who hope to press to vote “no” on any funding bill that doesn’t include DREAM Act legislation.
Giselle Barry, Markey’s communications director, told the Gazette that Markey does indeed plan to vote “no” on any funding bill that doesn’t include protections for dreamers, as well as other priorities like reauthorization for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, community health center funding, significant funding for disaster aid that includes Puerto Rico and opioid crisis emergency funding.
The group will also stop at the office of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, who has also championed the DREAM Act.
“It’s disheartening,” Rendon-Mendoza said of DACA’s impending end with no fix in sight. But she said she wants to create a revolutionary liberation movement that includes everybody. “I’m here for the long run… If my fight is the immigrant rights’ fight, I’ll fight.”
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.