Early this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the Trump administration’s intention to terminate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that protects unauthorized immigrants who entered the country as children from deportation. If Trump makes good on his word, it would enable Homeland Security to revoke the work and study permits of the 800,000 immigrants protected under DACA. Many could face deportation, even those who have lived in the United States since infancy, growing up immersed in American culture and receiving educations in American public schools.
Sessions’ announcement reinforces the anti-immigration principles characteristic of Trump’s campaign and presidency. Last December, he issued a statement “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what’s going on” and, two months later, an immigration ban took effect which targeted several primarily Muslim nations. He’s proposed legislation that would drastically reduce legal immigration quotas over the next 10 years. His ultimate goal with these decisions could lie in his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” which the Trump campaign sold as a wistful reminiscence of America’s (allegedly) bygone economic prosperity, but his behavior indicates that he might also be reminiscing about ethnic homogeneity.
Of Mexicans, Trump has said, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” For Trump, who has himself endorsed sexual assault, to claim that the Mexicans crossing the border are rapists is not only absurd, it’s racist, and it misunderstands the reason illegal immigration exists in the first place. Far from hauling sacks of drugs into the United States, immigrants cross miles of wilderness carrying their children, risking their lives for an America built on inclusion, not racial profiling.
His decision to end DACA marks a redoubled effort to dissolve this America. Whereas he could argue, albeit on unsound footing, that his constrictive immigration policies are keeping out terrorists and rapists, DACA protects children who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in the U.S. without the necessary paperwork. Its termination does not secure our borders. It does not put “America first” (a saying coined not by Trump, but by the America First Committee, an organization dedicated, between 1940 and ‘41, to preventing American intervention in Europe against the Nazis). It excludes a young, bright population from the country of their home, the place where they learned to ride a bicycle, where they celebrated their birthdays, where they attended their first dance.
In his announcement, Sessions masqueraded DACA as an “unconstitutional exercise of authority.” He implied that the program granted immigration status to its beneficiaries, when in reality it simply shielded them from deportation. What’s more, Sessions perpetuated the myth that DACA precipitated an increase in illegal immigration. No statistics exist to support this claim.
This isn’t a political issue so much as an ethical one. I have the privilege of dual citizenship, American and Czech, and feel intensely tied to both facets of my national identity. Others aren’t so fortunate. The children of DACA, who likely identify with both American culture and the culture of their parents, may have to renounce part of themselves in service to a bigoted agenda.
Martin Beck 