Crowds cheered as Daca recipients, also known as Dreamers, descended arm-in-arm from the steps of the US supreme court Thursday, after the justices determined Donald Trump’s 2017 decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (Daca) was unlawful.
Some wiped tears while others raised their fists. Elsewhere in Washington, on the floor of Congress, New York Democrat and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer delivered an emotional statement: “It gives you some faith that the laws, rules and mores of this country can be upheld.”
Daca allowed eligible immigrants who were brought to the US as undocumented minors to stay in the country with renewable protections from deportation and earn a work permit.
Although a majority of Dreamers are Latino, they represent a diverse array of young people brought from all over the world as children. In a statement, Cesar Vargas, New York state’s first undocumented attorney, said: “Dreamers can now breathe a sigh of relief.”
“We always knew this was close and we were proven right with the 5-4 decision,” he said, of the split vote between the nine justices that sit on the supreme court. “Now the Trump administration has to follow proper procedures to ensure that lives are not disrupted.”
The president and Republican leaders also reacted to the ruling. As news of the decision spread, the president shared tweets questioning the justices’ motivations before calling the decision “horrible [and] politically charged”.
“Do you get the impression that the supreme court doesn’t like me?” Trump later questioned on Twitter after graphically likening the decision to “shotgun blasts into the face” of conservatives.
Juan Escalante, a Daca recipient in Florida who was brought to the US from Venezuela at 11, insisted it was the president who made the issue political “by calling immigrants racist, murders and drug dealers”, he said, echoing Trump’s language from the campaign trail in the 2016 election.
While Escalante said he’s “elated” about the ruling, he’s also “hopeful” Trump will “step back and realize he lost”, as the court recognized the president had the power to end the Obama-era program and ruled against him on procedure, not that principle.
“The supreme court saw his actions for exactly what they were” malicious and done unlawfully,” he said. “Had [the president] not tried to use Daca recipients as a punching bag to further his anti-immigration agenda, he wouldn’t have suffered this embarrassment.”
Still, Escalante recognized the fight isn’t over for broader immigration, claiming if Trump expects to be re-elected, “he needs to understand the majority of voters from both parties, and independents support it”.
“The president claims to only want people who love this country, that’s his whole schtick. Well, I love this country and consider it my home,” he said.
Former US president Barack Obama, who first instituted Daca in 2012, congratulated Dreamers via Twitter on Thursday, saying he is “happy for them, their families, and all of us”.
“We may look different and come from everywhere, but what makes us American are our shared ideals,” he tweeted.
Obama insisted Americans must now stand up for Dreamers by electing former vice-president Joe Biden and a Democrat-controlled Congress to “create a system that’s truly worthy of this nation of immigrants once and for all”.
