In Juan Escalante’s latest column in HuffPost, he celebrates the latest federal court ruling in favor of DACA recipients, but calls on Trump and his fellow Republican leaders to do what only they can do: enact legislation that provides a permanent solution for Dreamers.
Read excerpts from Juan’s column below and check out the piece in its entirety here.
The Trump administration was dealt yet another blow to its un-American decision to pull the rug out from under young immigrants known as “Dreamers.”
Earlier this week, Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., issued a scathing ruling that deemed President Donald Trump’s attempt to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program as nothing short of “capricious” and “unlawful.” The program, which was a landmark Obama-era achievement, temporarily shielded certain Dreamers from deportation and allowed them to work and drive in the United States.
Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, argued that the current administration presented no adequate basis or explanation for its decision to terminate DACA back in September. He is the third judge to rule against the administration’s attempts to convert Dreamers, young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children, into deportation targets.
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And yet this is not quite the life raft that we Dreamers were hoping for, not by a long shot.
Fernanda Duran, the communications manager at the pro-migrant organization CASA, told The New York Times that “this is the first ray of hope that these Dreamers have had in a very long time.”
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At the end of the day, talk is cheap, especially to those of us who wake up every morning knowing that our livelihood in the United States might come to an end after a piece of plastic in our wallet expires or once Trump and his allies accomplish their goal to deport all immigrants and refugees.
What we need right now is bold and decisive action. No more stalling, because we all know how this story ends if Dreamers are not given a chance to adjust their immigration status: with their swift and merciless deportations.
Right now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House is attempting to force a vote on Dreamer legislation using a strategy that involves invoking an obscure rule known as the “queen of the hill.” But for this strategy to work, Republicans will have to buck their spineless and do-nothing speaker, Paul Ryan, and put actual skin in the game.
