Officials at The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), have angrily denounced reports that aides for President Donald Trump are urging him to protect the more than 800,000 young undocumented immigrants from deportation but in exchange ask from Congress funding toward mass deportations.
The plan, CHIRLA officials said Tuesday, would hold DACA recipients, known as “DREAMERS,” as hostages to fund “a mass deportation machine” and expand a white supremacist agenda.
“DACA recipients are not bait to advance a most nefarious deportation machine. We are human beings who work, go to school, help our parents and our community, have families, and contribute to this nation,” said Melody Klingenfuss, statewide organizer for the California Dream Network.
“We will not stand by while President Trump allows the white supremacists to expand their immoral and un-American agenda at the expense of our futures and that of our loved ones. Immigrant youth are here to stay and we will mobilize to protect ourselves and our families. We call on President Trump to have a heart and actually protect us, not destroy our families with more enforcement.”
Those sentiments were echoed by CHIRLA Executive Director Angelica Salas.
“Of the many anti-immigrant ideas to come across President Trump’s desk, the proposal to use young undocumented immigrants as bargaining chips to expand his immoral mass deportation machine is the most wicked,” Salas said. “We reject this xenophobic proposal and call on Congress to unequivocally condemn and deny President Trump and the white nationalists this request.”
Salas went on to say that “President Trump can protect young undocumented immigrants and their families by standing up to the right-wing Republican Attorney Generals and Governors threatening to end DACA in court or by using his bully pulpit to advance a permanent, clean immigration bill through Congress.”