School walkouts and rallies are anticipated today in up to three dozen places, as part of an effort to push lawmakers into legalizing the status of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who came to the US as minors. Supporters in Dallas are likely to demonstrate outside the workplace of Republican Senator, John Cornyn.
29-year-old Erik Burgos, a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, who is also the president of the North Texas Dream Team, which is focused on immigration, says Cornyn should step up and become the co-sponsor of a new DREAM Act He says that some kind of compromise, possibly including President Donald Trump’s much-discussed wall on the border of the US and Mexico, will need to be agreed to for such legislation to pass into law.
The biggest coalition of activists supporting programs to legalize undocumented immigrants is the youth-led, United We Dream. They are organizing demonstrations and rallies in cities such as Austin, El Paso, and Houston, and in and around Washington DC. An Austin flyer from the group says they want to see a new DREAM Act that comes without the militarization of the US border and mass deportations.
Around 800,000 people have been recipients of the deferred action program, created by executive action from President Barack Obama in 2012. The Trump administration announced that it would phase out in September, giving Congress six months to provide a more permanent legislative fix.