Good evening--
It appears likely that tomorrow, President Trump will rescind DACA, thereby putting 800,000 DREAMers at risk of deportation.
A few points to note about this:
1. There is a widespread misunderstanding that without DACA or Congress-passed, President-signed legislation on the books, DREAMers will not be deported. This is false. Note that the Trump Administration has explicitly changed ICE enforcement priorities as of January 2017 so that every unlawful immigrant is treated as a priority for removal.
2. There is also a widespread misunderstanding that immigrants being prioritized for removal are those with criminal convictions. Again, this is false, and that fact demonstrates why DREAMers will be at risk if DACA is indeed rescinded.
Since President Trump took office, ICE arrests of individuals without a criminal record have gone up 150%.
Moreover, the proportion of immigrants being deported who do not have criminal convictions was higher in the first four months of 2017 (i.e., under Trump) than in the equivalent period of 2016.
This means that the Trump administration is going after non-criminal unlawful immigrants much, much harder than the last administration did-- and that's a category that's apparently about to include DREAMers.
3. It is, in fact, fair to say that DREAMers will be at even greater risk of being deported than your bog-standard unlawful immigrant because, guess what? President Obama's extension of DACA to them meant that hundreds of thousands came forward and gave identifying information to the federal government.
It will, as such, be much easier for those detaining and deporting immigrants to locate, detain and deport DACA recipients than just about any other class of unlawful immigrant (possibly barring those previously protected under DAPA, or, say, MS-13 members currently sitting in a US jail).
Watch for DACA recipient deportations to start immediately, and on a more widespread basis than nearly anyone is predicting.
On the latter point, this was always a core reason to oppose the institution of DACA by presidential diktat in the first place (the major one, of course, is that immigration policy where there are not obvious national security concerns should not be set unilaterally by the executive, and immigrants can only be secure in their status if that status accords with duly-passed-and-signed federal law).
That being said, whatever one thinks about DACA from a "government deportation list" and/or public law standpoint, the point remains that without DACA, 800,000 unlawful immigrants who came here as kids will lose their legal protections and be subject to deportation if not now, then soon.
It also remains the case that these people have, in good faith (albeit erroneously), trusted the US government not to deport them for five years now-- a period in which their connections to the US have been even further established.
And finally, it remains the case that multiple sets of polls, including polling not conducted by anything that FAIR, NumbersUSA, CIS or Californians for Population Stabilization could attack as an immigration advocacy outfit, show 80% support for protecting DREAMers among Republicans.
If President Trump does indeed rescind DACA, he will be flying in the face of public opinion to a massive degree, and conducting a full 180-degree flip-flop with regard to DACA, which he has until now chosen to maintain.
It will be critical, if this occurs, for Congress to move immediately on DREAMer-focused legislation, to ensure that DREAMers are not, in fact, deported-- as they surely will be in the absence of swift congressional action to address this situation.
Thanks,
Liz
|
|
|
|
