A group of 20 state prosecutors today launched an initiative in favor of “dreamers” with a letter sent to President Donald Trump to affirm his commitment to undocumented youth who shelter Deferred Action (DACA).
“Mr. President, now is the time to reaffirm the commitment you made to those ‘incredible children’ who benefit from the DACA and its families and communities to deal with this issue with a heart,” prosecutors wrote in the letter.
The initiative, headed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, is being signed by 19 other prosecutors, including New York statesman Eric Schneridermen; Of Illinois, Lisa Madigan, or New Mexico, Hector Balderas.
In the letter, they remind President Trump that since the adoption of the Deferred Action five years ago, a total of 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children brought by their parents have benefited.
“They have become our new soldiers, graduate students, nurses, or emergency personnel. They are our neighbors, our co-workers, or the leaders of our churches and communities,” they say.
Therefore, the signatories of the letter call for “training” the “dreamers” to reach their full potential instead of “terrorizing” them, and warn Trump that the cost of not doing so would be “too high” for the economy. country.
In this sense, the Attorney General of New York highlighted today in a statement that only in his state there are 41,000 “dreamers” who contribute to the public coffers 140 million dollars a year and “have earned the right to continue living and working” in the country.
“We need comprehensive immigration reform, but in the meantime, we need to maintain common sense programs like the DACA that empower our young people to continue to pursue the American dream,” Schneiderman concluded.
In their letter, the 20 prosecutors leverage to criticize the ten-state crackdown on Texas-led DACA in another letter they sent June 29 to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“You have said repeatedly that the ‘dreamers’ must be ‘quiet.’ That’s why we join today to urge you not to give in to the demands of those states because their arguments are incorrect,” they add.
Those ten states have given the government until September 5 to rescind the DACA, or threaten to file a lawsuit in a court in Brownsville, Texas, to terminate the program.
President Trump has repeated on several occasions that the issue of the “dreamers” is one of the “most difficult” with which it has to face, but so far has not offered many details of how you plan to approach “with heart.”
The Deferred Action program (DACA) was approved in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama and has since prevented the deportation of some 800,000 dreamers and has also allowed them to obtain a work permit and a driver’s license.
Along with the California, New York, Illinois and New Mexico prosecutors, Connecticut, Hawaii, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, and the District of Columbia also signed the letter. .
