As its future hangs in the balance, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, protecting undocumented young immigrants who came to the US as children from the threat of deportation, was supported on Wednesday. Miami-Dade leaders lined up to give their support to the so-called ‘Dreamers’, assuring them that the community is behind them.
For the last five years, individuals accepted into the deferred action program could get a driver’s license and work permit, as well as protection from deportation. But the program, created in 2012 by President Barack Obama via executive action, could be terminated as early as this week, by President Donald Trump. The community leaders got together at Miami-Dade College, which in 2010 became the center of the Dreamer movement, when four undocumented immigrant students walked 1500 miles to the US capital from the Freedom Tower, to highlight their plight.
The crowd heard from Eduardo Padron, the MDC President, who announced that their community’s leaders were with them. Many of those leaders have a personal connection to the issue, with Alberto Carvalho, the Superintendent of Miami-Dade Schools, having been an unaccompanied immigrant minor.
Carvalho said that it was right for the community to stand up and show their support to youngsters who are American in all but the circumstances of their birth. Likewise, Tomas Regalado, the Mayor of Miami, is only where he is because of the now defunct ‘wet foot, dry foot’ Cuban immigration policy, and says that the White House needs to know that Dreamers should be protected.