While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursdaythat the Trump administration cannot immediately shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, the New York Immigration Coalition says more needs to be done to recognize immigrants’ humanity.
The 5-4 ruling is seen as a narrow victory for immigrants and their loved ones who feared possible deportation had the ruling gone the other way.
“This is in spite of the Trump and Republican leadership’s best efforts to arrest, jail and deport DACA recipients in the only country they’ve known as home,” said Anu Joshi with NYIC.
Since the Trump Administration attempted to shut down the DACA program, Joshi said that some who were eligible couldn’t apply. Joshi believes that the ruling should now force the Department of Homeland Security to start accepting new DACA applications.
Diana Rodriguez, also with the NYIC, is a DACA recipient and said that she now wants to see more done to help people like her parents, who are still vulnerable as undocumented immigrants. For example, her father, a frontline worker during the pandemic, didn’t get a stimulus check.
“We can’t stop right now,” Rodriguez said. “We have to continue fighting for our families, for our communities, for those who have lost their lives during COVID-19 without getting anything.”
In a series of tweets, President Donald Trump said that the decision was highly political and not based on “law and order.” He tweeted, “Now we have to start this process all over again.”
