Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and other leaders hosted a phone banking event in Iowa this week to urge the state’s congressional delegation to protect immigrant youth, just one of the recent actions urging legislators to act on a clean DREAM Act by December. Without it, 1,400 DACA recipients stand to lose their work permits and protection from deportation every day.
In Salt Lake City, Utah, undocumented immigrant youth and their advocates presented Republican Senator Orrin Hatch’s office with 10,500 paper butterflies—“one for every Utah Dreamer”—to pressure him to support the bipartisan Dream Act. Butterflies migrate in order to survive and thrive, making them a beautiful metaphor for immigration.
“Butterflies signify migration,” said Dreamer and activist Ciriac Alvarez, who led the creative project with the help of elementary and middle schoolers, told the Salt Lake Tribune. “Nature doesn’t have borders and I don’t think anyone is illegal. I think it’s a beautiful concept to think of Dreamers as butterflies.”
In San Antonio, Texas, DACA recipients rallied in front of the office of Republican Congressman Will Hurd to call on him to join Republican Joe Barton and the entire Democratic delegation in supporting the bipartisan DREAM Act. In the past, Hurd has said Congress needs to “come up with a permanent solution for children brought here through no fault of their own,” but he has yet to come onboard for the legislation. On the same day Dreamers lobbied his office, advocates launched an ad targeting him and other lawmakers:
The campaign featuring television and digital ads is an effort by the Emerson Collective, a philanthropic organization founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple’s billionaire founder, Steve Jobs.
The spot focusing the 23rd District congressman ends with the video saying, “Tell Rep. Hurd: It’s not enough to just say you support Dreamers. Pass the Dream Act now.”
One of the so-called Dreamers is Karen Reyes, who has been in the U.S. since she was 2 years old. A graduate of Churchill High School, where she was in the marching band, Reyes is now a teacher in Austin with a master’s degree in deaf education and hearing science.
“Unless the Dream Act passes, this is my last year teaching," Reyes said. “Should I get deported, I will have to go to a country I know nothing about. It’s terrifying.”
In Seaford, New York, demonstrators held a vigil in front of the home of Republican Congressman Peter King, calling on him to protect both immigrant youth and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) families, including the 50,000 Haitians affected by the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the program. The protest turned international when undocumented immigrants in Dublin, Ireland, staged their own rally targeting the Irish-American legislator:
A large group of students, including teens still dressed in their school uniforms, gathered by the Famine Memorial on Monday evening to show their support for the estimated 800,000 undocumented men and women brought to the United States as children. The group of Irish teenagers gathered on Custom House Quay included young undocumented migrants who came to Ireland with their parents as children seeking better opportunities and a brighter future.
“Congressman Peter King is very fond of his Irish heritage but he can’t just be Irish on St Patrick’s Day,” said 18-year-old Arianah, adding that Mr King had a responsibility to support undocumented Irish people throughout the whole year.
“Speaking from experience,” Arianah said, “I know what it’s like to live under fear of the police and not having access to third level education or medical care. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone else. It’s Universal Children’s Day and no child should grow up undocumented in Ireland, in the US or anywhere else.”
Back in the United States, organizer Walter Barrientos said that “we need him to take more action … our families are not able to celebrate the holidays”:
King has said he supports restoring protections under the Deferred Action for Children Arrivals (DACA) program that President Donald Trump rescinded in September. The Obama-era program allowed people who came to the United States without proper documentation as children to remain in the country. The Trump administration has also announced it will begin ending TPS, which has allowed people fleeing conflicts or natural disasters to remain in the United States.
“I’m working on DACA and I’m working on TPS,” King said Sunday in an interview. “I’m meeting with immigrant groups all the time. I’m meeting with the church groups. It will get done.’’
Barrientos said the people facing deportation next year need King to “stand up for the families that he represents.”
Immigrant rights activists also targeted another New York Republican, Congressman Dan Donovan, delivering 2,000 petition signatures at a town hall and challenging him on his own DREAM Act inaction.
And in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, a group of DACA recipients and their allies launched a three-day hunger strike urging both Republican Congressman Chris Smith and other legislators to support the DREAM Act. “It’s an opportunity to reflect and really understand Dreamers that are really threatened right now,” said Andrew Sydenstricker, a community organizer. The advocates, who also plan to visit the offices of Republican Representatives Rodney Frelinghuysen, Frank LoBiondo, and Leonard Lance, also delivered a letter to Smith’s office.
"We are doing this action on Thanksgiving because its a time where we want to be close to family,” the letter read. “We are making a big sacrifice this Thanksgiving to fight so that we can stay together with our families for next year's meal. We don't need a legislative version of DACA, we need a permanent legislative solution that gives Dreamers a pathway to citizenship. Time is running out."