Trump faces ‘militant’ response if he targets undocumented ‘DREAMers,’ advocate says

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to scrap a Barack Obama program that gives opportunity to 750,000 young illegal immigrants.





WASHINGTON—One of the first big fights of Donald Trump’s presidency will be about what to do with people like Oliverio Cortes, whose future he could crush in a single second.

“One little signature,” Cortes said Wednesday. “One little signature could just destroy me.”

Cortes wakes up at five a.m., six days a week, to drive his parents to the life he thought — until last Tuesday — he had managed to avoid: picking tomatoes under the hot Florida sun. They are illegal immigrants.

Through no fault of his own he is one, too. But he has opportunities. At least for another couple of months.

Cortes, 20, was brought to America from Mexico as a one-year-old child. As a “DREAMer,” someone who arrived illegally before his 16th birthday, he was able to enrol in a Barack Obama program that protects him from deportation and gives him a renewable two-year work permit.

Seeing possibility, he became the first person in his family to graduate high school. He was able to obtain a driver’s licence and a good casino job. He bought a car. And he enrolled in cosmetology school, a first step toward his goal of a career as a beauty products entrepreneur.

Trump has vowed to “immediately” scrap the Obama program, a unilateral executive action he and other conservatives say is both unconstitutional and an inappropriate reward for bad behaviour. He can do so, if he wants to, on his first day in office.

“As with any law enforcement activity, we will set priorities. But, unlike this administration, no one will be immune or exempt from enforcement,” Trump said in August. “Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation. That is what it means to have laws and to have a country.”

A cancellation of the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), would please the anti-illegal-immigration voters who helped propel Trump’s unlikely rise. But it would pose a real risk to Trump as well, testing the extent to which he can sell a zero-tolerance stand against sympathetic people whom polls suggest most voters think should be put on a path to citizenship.

Of America’s 11 million illegal immigrants, DREAMers are easiest for white citizens to feel bad for: young, morally innocent, fluent in English, often well-educated. And they are savvy and aggressive, having honed their persuasion skills in relentlessly lobbying Obama.



“We pressured someone that was in the White House that called himself an ally. Imagine what we’re going to do with someone that has said so many things about our community,” said Liz Magallanes, 22, a legal assistant and activist in Texas.

“We’re not just going to let anybody take our privilege, what we have achieved, away from us. It’s that simple. Of course there will be a fight. And I’m down for a fight. Down to protect me and all of us,” said Carlos Esteban Arellano, 30, a nursing student in Virginia.

Frank Sharry, a leading pro-immigrant reform advocate, believes it is a fight they will probably lose.

The early signs, Sharry said, are unpromising. Among the names being floated for top positions in the Trump administration are two of the country’s most unyielding immigration hard-liners, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

“I don’t think our chances are very good of winning it,” Sharry said. He added: “I think most of us would expect him to throw red meat to his nativist base, and this is going to be one of those ways to do it.”

Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, said the coming battle might involve everything up to “widespread civil disobedience” and, “if need be, law-breaking.” He said he expects citizens to “literally” put themselves in between DREAMers and federal agents trying to apprehend them, some companies to declare they will continue to employ DREAMers, some cities to declare themselves no-apprehension zones.

“I think the opposition is going to be increasingly militant,” Sharry said. “The idea of taking 750,000 kids who are American in all but paperwork and putting them at risk of deportation and taking them out of jobs is just so radical, and if he does it, it’ll be incredibly unpopular. And I think it will stir a kind of resistance that you don’t normally see in American politics.”



Obama urged Trump on Monday to “think long and hard before they (endanger) the status of what for all practical purposes are American kids.” He dismissed a Thursday request from a group of House Democrats from California to grant pardons to DREAMers; “only Congress can create legal status for undocumented individuals,” a White House official said.

The DREAMers, named for the unsuccessful DREAM Act, say they still think they can change the mind of a president-elect prone to policy waffling. Magallanes said they might have success focusing on the economic harm of a reversal. But they will spend much of their energy on securing protection from the local and university leaders who appear more inclined to help.

“We will be calling on local elected officials, including mayors and governors, to support us in building sanctuaries and safe spaces for undocumented immigrants and refugees,” said Karla Perez, 24, a DREAMer, law student and activist in Houston.

It is a bitter irony that their participation in an initiative meant to keep them safe may now make it easier for Trump to deport them. To sign up for DACA, the DREAMers had to provide their fingerprints and addresses to the Obama administration. No law prevents Trump from using the information to track them down.

The end of the program would not necessarily mean deportation. Even if DREAMers were allowed to stay, though, they would be forced back into a fearful existence of under-the-table cash labour, professional paths closed again.

“If everything goes away, it’s just heartbreaking, honestly,” Cortes said, becoming emotional. “It’s just so confusing. I worked super hard for everything I have. I hope and I pray that everything is not going to be taken away from me.”

Damn what a story. That's exactly what's gonna go down.

What about eDACA?

Asking the right questions.

why the fuck are those signs in spanish

I would not mind if English was made the official language, it would prevent these things from happening. These people do more damage than anything. Mexican flags as well, give up your stupid nationalism, you are part of the problem waving your stupid flag, those people are just as bad or worst than the people claiming themselves patriots. At least the "patriots" are in their own damn country.

Ehh I don't care.

Someone that is against this, can you put your 2 cents in?

It's bothers me too. Why would one go and ask to be recognised as part of this country while waving another flag??

People that fly other countries flags should go back to that country that flag represents.

Please no violence