Klamath Falls, OR— What is DACA?
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — or DACA — defers deportation proceedings for two years for qualified individuals who were brought to the United States illegally when they were children. The program also gives those who are approved work authorization, and the approvals can be renewed. DACA was created on June 15, 2012, by then-President Barack Obama.
In other words, children of undocumented immigrants who apply for deferred action—they’re called Dreamers because the law that implemented DACA is called the DREAM Act—are guaranteed protection from deportation by the federal government.
Because DACA permits are, by law, set to expire every two years, the March 5 deadline has very little to do with any individual Dreamer. What the date actually signifies is a deadline that President Trump set for Congress, back on September 5, 2017.
Congress has not legalized DACA, but a federal judge recently ruled that canceling the program was illegal because it was based on a “flawed legal premise that the agency lacked authority to implement DACA.”
With DACA deadline passed, local undocumented immigrants demanding action.
It’s been more than six months since President Trump announced an end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as children from deportation. March 5 was set as a deadline for Congress to create new legislation to protect DACA recipients, but now that deadline has come and gone.
Multiple federal judges ruled in February that the Trump administration lacked justification to end the program and ordered the Department of Homeland Security to renew all existing DACA permits.
Although DACA recipients remain safe from deportation for now, their future in the United States remains uncertain.
Congress could still act. But the federal court rulings placing a temporary stay on Trump’s plan to end DACA removed the deadline for Congress to do something or else risk letting the program expire. Now, lawmakers have more time, while the legal battle winds its way through the courts. But without the pressure of a looming deadline, it may be harder for Congress to pass a DACA bill. The focus in Congress has also shifted from DACA to gun control, after the mass shooting at a Florida high school last month. For now, existing DACA recipients can apply for extensions while they wait for the legal process to play out. But their long-term future in the U.S. remains uncertain.
“On Sept. 5, Trump killed DACA. He thought he would bury us. He thought we would run scared and back into the shadows, and he thought that we’d give up. But let me tell you, he was wrong,” one of the undocumented speakers cheered on the crowd. “Look at us now. We are here, still undocumented, and still unafraid, because we are here to fight…Trump also had five months, and all he did was reject solution after solution.”
California Gov. Jerry Brown fired back at Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Donald Trump on Wednesday after their lawsuit challenging the state's immigration laws, calling the administration "full of liars" and repeatedly referencing the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.
The Democratic governor was speaking on the heels of Sessions' visit to Sacramento to announce a lawsuit against California for its so-called sanctuary policies of non-cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
By James Garland of Tulelake News
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