Immigration experts are waiting to see if President Donald Trump will comply with a recent federal court ruling protecting some of the nation’s Dreamers, an immigrant rights advocate said during an online panel discussion.
“This is not an administration that has proven it will listen to anyone but themselves, including the courts,” said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, deputy director of federal advocacy at United We Dream.
She was one of several panelists invited by America’s Voice to provide updates on the nation’s rapidly evolving immigration situation, including deportations, using immigration laws to punish ideological rivals and the ultimate fate of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA.
Just days before Trump’s January inauguration, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld a lower court ruling in favor of Texas’ claim that DACA is unlawful because its recipients cost the state $750 million in Medicaid, education and other social services.
However, the ruling applies only in Texas and maintains protections for Dreamers already enrolled in the program and allows recipients the opportunity to renew for two-year periods. DACA provides work authorization and immunity from deportation for immigrants who were brought into the U.S. as children through no will of their own.
530,000 DACA recipients reside in the U.S.
The ruling went into effect March 11 but could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court for review.
According to the National Immigration Forum, 530,000 DACA recipients reside in the U.S. out of a total of 3.6 million immigrants who might have been eligible for the program. As a whole, the group is expected to contribute about $420 billion to the Gross Domestic Product and pay more than $12 billion in taxes to Social Security and Medicare.
Trump has claimed support for DACA in the past, although he tried closing the program during his first term. In a December interview with NBC News, Trump said “Republicans are very open to the Dreamers” and are willing to “work with Democrats on a plan.”
But an administration that defies court orders and recently deported a U.S. citizen child and cancer victim with her immigrant parents does not inspire trust when it comes to Dreamers, Macedo do Nascimento said. “We do not yet know if and how the Trump administration will follow the court’s mandate. We know who Donald Trump is. We have seen the assaults he has carried out against our communities, and we know that at any moment he can try to end DACA.”
Meanwhile, immigrant advocates are gearing up for any action the president takes against Dreamers.
David Leopold
“I know exactly what this program means for my life and I want others to have that relief,” she said. “No matter what comes next, we are ready. If Trump chooses to attack DACA and DACA recipients, we are ready. We know our home is here and we’ll always fight to protect our communities.”
Civil rights advocates also must prepare for any effort by the administration to employ a rarely used section of the U.S. Immigration Nationality Act to arrest, detain and deport ideological opponents, said David Leopold, America’s Voice legal adviser and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
That section of the law allows the U.S. Secretary of State to order the deportation of noncitizens considered threats to foreign policy interests. It was the statute federal agents used to arrest and hold Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. resident and Israel war protest leader accused by the administration of “being aligned with Hamas.”
The federal government has since accused the Syrian-born immigrant married to a U.S. citizen of committing immigration fraud in order to gain a U.S. green card, CBS news reported.
The fact Khalil was whisked out of New York City after his arrest and briefly detained in New Jersey before being secretly transported to a facility in Louisiana is especially worrisome, Leopold said. An ongoing federal lawsuit has prevented his deportation so far.
“That in and of itself should create shutters and chills and horror in every American.”
“This is where we are and what happened here, and that in and of itself should create shutters and chills and horror in every American. This is not a country where we disappear people for periods of time and pop them up thousands of miles away.”
Claiming Khalil should be deported for leading counter-war protests at Columbia University, and simply because Secretary of State Marco Rubio wills it, is blatantly unconstitutional and immoral, he added.
Naureen Shah
“This is an attack not just on an individual, this is an attack on our core principles, the core principles of our American constitutional Republic — free speech, free association,” he said. “This administration is using immigration law to whittle away and destroy our constitutional democracy. That is what’s happening. That’s what this is about.”
It’s also why the outcome of Khalil’s lawsuit is so important, said Naureen Shah, director of government affairs for the equity division at the American Civil Liberties Union.
“If they can do this to Mr. Khalil, they can do it to any of us. No president can be allowed to set an ideological litmus test and exclude or remove people from this country because they disagree with them. In fact, democracy requires dissent,” she declared.
And dissent should not be a basis for deportation, she added. “The Trump administration’s actions here are really about their broader campaign to terrorize people in this country who are noncitizens. They want noncitizens to have to look over their shoulders at every turn. They want noncitizens to be afraid to speak out and afraid to participate in public life in this country.”