- Photos courtesy: Asian Americans Advancing Justice
Atlanta, GA, September 5, 2017: Advancing Justice-Atlanta took part in a demonstration in support of DACA with hundreds of others in downtown Atlanta. The activists marched from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s office building on Ted Turner Drive to the Atlanta City Detention Center, where some immigrant detainees are held.
President Donald Trump has decided to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), the program that grants work permits to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as children with a six-month delay, media outlets earlier reported.
Trump has wrestled for months with whether to do away with the DACA introduced by his predecessor Barack Obama in June 2012 to shield hundreds of thousands of undocumented youths from deportation.
But conversations with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who argued that Congress was responsible for writing immigration law, helped persuade the President to terminate the program, the informed sources told Politico news on Sunday.
“We stand here today as immigrants, as people of color and as people who care for one another to say we will not stand for this hatred,” Aisha Yaqoob, policy director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta, told the demonstrators. “Please stand with me and make sure you are demanding our representatives in Congress are taking the best steps necessary to make positive and meaningful legislation to protect all of our immigrant communities today.”
Trump is expected to formally make an announcement on the program’s termination on Tuesday, and the White House informed House Speaker Paul Ryan of the President’s decision on Sunday
On Friday, Ryan said that he did not think the President should terminate DACA, and that Congress should act on the issue.
According to official documents, approximately 800,000 undocumented immigrants are currently benefiting from the DACA programme.
Permits under DACA are granted for two years before needing to be renewed.
A latest study by groups that support DACA estimated that 1,400 people a day could lose their protections if renewals ended.
Former Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has condemned the move, reports CNN.
“If Trump decides to end DACA, it will be one of the ugliest and cruelest decisions ever made by a president in our modern history,” the Vermont Senator tweeted on Sunday night.
