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Local vigil held in reaction to DACA ending
By Billy Ludt
YOUNGSTOWN
President Donald Trump’s decision to end a program protecting undocumented youths from deportation prompted a protest by area residents.
The Trump administration announced Tuesday the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will end in March 2018.
DACA, passed in 2012 during Barack Obama’s presidency, gave nearly 800,000 children of undocumented immigrants brought into the country by their parents the opportunity to work in the U.S., and it protected them from deportation if they were accepted into the program.
About 30 people gathered at the corner of Market and Federal streets downtown Tuesday evening. “We hope we can get a resolution to this horrible decision,” said Sister Norma Rappel of the Ursuline Sisters. “It’s unjust and embarrassing for us as Americans.”
Sister Norma worked for many years in Brownsville, Texas, on the U.S. and Mexico border, and her experience with undocumented immigrants shaped her perspective. “There’s no life for them in their previous country,” she said.
Vicki Vicars, one of the protest’s organizers, implored people to take two actions. The first is to contact their senators and representatives to have the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM) brought back to the Congress floor.
DREAM is a proposal providing a track for undocumented minors to gain conditional and permanent residency.
“The second is that people who are beneficiaries of DACA need to know that we’ve got their back,” Vicars said, “that we want them here, that we value them here and that we’ve got their back. There are people in the Valley who care about the young people who have been here.”
Kevin Wyndham, Trumbull County Republican Party chairman, on Tuesday issued a statement supporting Trump’s decision, saying Obama’s decision to enact DACA was not within his power.
“Everyone on both sides recognizes that immigration reform is needed, but it won’t ever happen unless seemingly drastic actions like this are taken,” Wyndham said.
Mahoning County Republican Party Chairman Mark Munroe said Trump’s decision to provide six months before phasing out the program is compassionate, citing Obama’s executive order to enact DACA as illegal and improper.
“The solution has to be formulated by Congress,” Munroe said. “The problem is that the country is long overdue to overhaul its immigration laws, and maybe by the president taking the action he did, he’s going to put some pressure on Congress to take some action and solve some problems.”
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, opposed the decision, asking the president to divert his administration’s efforts toward immigration reform.
“He wants Americans to believe that closing the door to immigrants and closing off our nation from the rest of the world will fix our immigration system,” Ryan said in a statement.
Congress will have the option for the next six months to make legislative changes to DACA, prior to when the government will cease renewing permits for youths in the program.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Cleveland, a Democrat, also expressed opposition to Trump’s decision.
“President Trump promised to go after violent criminals, not innocent children,” Brown said in a statement. “We should not be targeting young people who are working, going to school, paying taxes and contributing to this country – the country they grew up in and the only home they’ve ever known.”
The Mahoning County Young Democrats oppose rescinding DACA. “The Trump administration’s latest attempt to fire up what is left of the base who so enthusiastically chanted about building a wall is simply disgusting,” MCYD President Christopher Anderson said in a statement. “These are men and women who greatly contribute to our society.”