Yesterday, President Donald Trump met with Republican senators to discuss the future of immigrant youth put in danger by the President's abrupt termination of the Deferment Action for Childhood Arrivals Program. Amid reports that some senators advocated for delaying any DACA fix and tying protection for these youth to partisan enforcement measures, NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling issued the following statement:
This is not the time to play politics with people’s lives. Dreamers, including the 75,000 Dreamers who are LGBTQ, cannot afford to wait for Congress to do its job. These youth, who are Americans in every way but the paperwork, had the rug pulled from under their feet by President Trump, and Republican senators are now using them as bargaining chips against their own families and communities.
With every day, DACA protections expire for more and more young people. Congress’ inaction directly endangers the lives of transgender Dreamers by putting them at risk of deportation to countries they have never called home and where people like them face pervasive violence because of their identity. Congress must pass a clean Dream Act now to protect these young Americans from deportation—without their lives being used as a bargaining chip for partisan enforcement measures that harm their families and neighbors.
