NCLR Joins Civil Rights Groups in Demanding White House Preserve DACA Program
On January 18, in anticipation of expected executive orders on immigration from the Trump administration, NCLR signed onto a letter from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights urging the new president to keep the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program for immigrant youth intact.
The DACA program was established in 2012 under former President Obama to grant temporary deportation relief to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States before their sixteenth birthday. More than 750,000 individuals—known as “DREAMers”—have enjoyed the benefits of the DACA program. For many DREAMers who have grown up in the United States, this has been the only country that they have ever known.
When DACA was created, hundreds of thousands of young people came forward and registered with the federal government, which included background checks and application fees. Under the Trump administration, the program is under threat. Many in the Latino and immigrant rights communities are rightly concerned about the future of the program and what its elimination would mean for the more than 750,000 undocumented immigrants who have given the federal government information about themselves and their families.
“Any move to deport DREAMers would be even worse,” the letter reads. “It is beyond question that the American public supports reasonable and fair immigration reforms, ones that include putting unauthorized immigrants on a path to citizenship – and this public would be deeply troubled by a decision to expel immigrants who, having arrived as minor children, have acted fully consistently with the best of American values and who are, for all intents and purposes, American.”
NCLR has also joined other civil rights organizations in calling for the passage of the BRIDGE Act, a bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Graham (R-S.C.) and Durbin (D-Ill.), which would protect DREAMers and keep their status in place in the event that DACA is repealed.
Read the entire letter below.
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