Brittany Gibson
Protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday morning.
Maria Siaca traveled from Brooklyn to demonstrate outside the Supreme Court on a rainy November Monday, because this case, she says, is one of the biggest events in the lives of several groups of immigrants. The Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) programs provide amnesty and documentation to hundreds of thousands of people living in the United States. But since President Donald Trump has threatened to remove those protections, Siaca, who is also a DACA recipient says, “Our lives can be on the borderline.”
“It may seem insignificant to most, but to us [this legislation] means everything,” she says. Siaca, 26, found out she was undocumented during her senior year of high school. Her family moved from Mexico to the U.S. when she was seven years old. Today, she helps run her family business in New York and studies criminal justice at John Jay College. “I’m here representing my other siblings and those who could not be here to shout and share their stories.”
Siaca is one voice in the crowd of more than 500 people who gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court on Tuesday, while opening arguments were presented to the justices inside. Organizations came from across the country to be present at the historic hearing. Activists and DACA recipients rallied the crowd behind their cause, including Black Panther star Bambadjan Bamba.
Bamba moved to the U.S. from Côte d’Ivoire when his parents applied for political asylum. By the time they were approved, he was ineligible to receive the same benefits because he was 21 years old and married, so he applied for and received DACA. He says that he hid his status from the world, including executives at NBC while going on to star in The Good Place. Now, he is done hiding.
“I’m sick and tired of living in fear,” he told the crowd, with the Supreme Court at his back. “I’m sick and tired of being paralyzed by fear … I’m sick and tired of being in the shadows."
Brittany Gibson
'Black Panther' star Bambadjan Bamba speaks on the steps of the Supreme Court.
Speeches were punctuated by cheers from the crowd, bolstered by a small drum line, chants in English (“Undocumented! Unafraid!”) and in Spanish (“Si se puede!”). The normally quiet DC street buzzed with noise directed toward the Court, but some demonstrators were also directing their attention to the Capitol Building, which houses Congress, directly across the street. “I’m looking there more so than here,” says Stephanie Barnes, who works as the operations director of Just Neighbors, an organization that provides legal services to low-income immigrants and refugees based in Arlington, Virginia. “We need something more comprehensive … We need DACA to be more permanent,” Barnes says. “All DACA recipients and immigrants need a pathway forward.”
When President Barack Obama introduced the DACA program in June 2012, he said it should serve as a “temporary stopgap measure” for undocumented children brought to the U.S. by their parents. Qualified applicants would be able to obtain work authorization and protection from deportation for two years, with the option to renew. President Obama said this program would give relief to people while Congress worked to pass the DREAM Act, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for the same category of people who qualified for DACA.
In 2017, Congress had not passed the DREAM Act, and President Trump decided to follow through on his campaign promise to rescind the protections of the DACA program. Of the nearly 700,000 people who receive DACA, many are now working adults, like Siaca, for whom the work authorization has improved their lives. A survey from Professor Tom K. Wong, of University of California, San Diego, found that about 58 percent of respondents after DACA moved to a better job, about 50 percent moved to jobs with better work conditions, and more than 50 percent were able to get jobs within their fields that fit into their long-term career goals.
Although DACA is not permanent, its measurable benefits to people’s lives and the economy are already visible. Barnes says that 85 percent of DACA recipients are working or in school, and her office sees their achievements directly, from blue-collar workers to brain surgeons. “Why would we not want these people to be part of our country?” she asks.
At Just Neighbors, Barnes says she has seen an increase in immigrants seeking legal assistance, because her organization has had a long-standing place in the community. Barnes has worked with Just Neighbors since 2010, helping people even before DACA started, and their Justice and Advocacy Fellow Kimberly Garcia, who was also at today’s demonstration, worked with organizations and local high schools to share information with the community.
But this sort of clarity and safety is rare under Trump’s immigration policy roll-out. The lack of a permanent solution has lead to an escalation in force and quantity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. In addition to Trump’s rhetoric, hate crimes have also increased in the U.S. Many Democrats have denounced Trump’s views on immigrants, claiming they inspired deadly mass shootings and stoked racial anxieties among white Americans. And some progressives have even called for abolishing ICE because of the anxiety it perpetuates in vulnerable immigrant communities, among legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, DACA recipients, and TPS recipients.
Lily Montalvan, a TPS recipient from El Salvador, traveled for 18 hours with her 6-year-old daughter to demonstrate for her rights. She said, through a translator, that she’s lived in the U.S. for the last 25 years, protected by TPS. But she traveled to DC with United We Dream because this year, her husband Walter, who was also in the U.S. with TPS, was deported. Walter, originally of Peru, lived in the U.S. for the last 30 years with his wife and two American children, ages 6 and 17, making regular check-ins with immigration authorities to maintain his protected status.
On February 22, at a routine check-in, Montalvan says her husband was detained by ICE. He was supposed to have a supervised meeting with immigration officers, but he never came home. On March 22, Walter was deported from the United States. Montalvan says she’s here today “to fight.”
“Walter wasn’t a priority under Obama,” she says, of the U.S.’s legal immigration framework. “I want a solution not a band-aid, a permanent solution for my family… Like my family there are so many other families with the same problems as mine.”
Since the Trump Administration halted the DACA program and began rolling back TPS protections, there has been more overt solidarity for America’s growing immigrant communities, and a greater willingness to combat Trump’s rhetoric. The Families Belong Together Coalition brought hundreds of thousands out in the streets last year. Trump’s policies have also inspired some undocumented people to be more open about sharing their stories.
“If we want any chance of moving this political needle, especially with this upcoming election where immigration will be a central issue,” Bamba told the crowd. “[We have to] start telling our stories, telling our truths … or we won’t be able to change.”
