Jesus Contreras, a paramedic and 911 responder in Texas, said we should be worried about U.S. medical care facilities breaking under strain of the coronavirus epidemic, which is quickly escalating in states like Florida and Texas. "We haven't seen its full potential yet," he tells USA Today. “My biggest concern is we’ll have to start turning patients away, deciding which patients get treatment.”
The paramedic worked in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, and is yet again prepared to help save lives during this public health crisis. Whether the federal government will let him keep working as a paramedic is another story: Contreras is one of the 700,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients that the Trump administration wants to deport.
In an urgent legal brief filed at the Supreme Court late last week, young immigrants who sued the administration over the termination of the program called on the justices to take the current coronavirus public health crisis into account in their decision, which is expected by this June. In that brief, they say that deporting the nearly 30,000 DACA recipients who work as medical care professionals during “this national emergency would be catastrophic.”
Veronica Velasquez, a physical therapist at a community hospital in California, told USA Today that “pandemic or no pandemic,” she’s chosen this career because she wants to help people. “This is just my calling,” she said. “I worked very hard to become a physical therapist, especially with DACA.” According to the legal brief, “Approximately 27,000 DACA recipients are healthcare workers—including nurses, dentists, pharmacists, physician assistants, home health aides, technicians, and other staff—and nearly 200 are medical students, residents, and physicians.”
All young people the administration wants to kick out should the justices side with the impeached president, and done with the complicity of Senate Republicans who refuse to pass permanent protections. Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern has recently called on House Democrats to insert relief in the next round of coronavirus legislation, but they’d be sure to block that too. So as Republicans are standing way too close together to pat themselves on the back for helping pass coronavirus legislation, they’re also helping deport a whole lot of people who are saving lives in this crisis.
“The Trump administration has latitude to automatically extend the work permits of everyone currently in the program,” The Boston Globe said in a recent editorial supporting the new legal brief at the Supreme Court. “Better yet—the government could moot the case by dropping its effort to abolish the protections. The public health emergency caused by COVID-19 only makes the preservation of the protections against deportation more urgent.”
“I can’t give up now that I’ve worked so hard,” Paola Sanchez, a DACA recipient who works at a Massachusetts hospital, told The Boston Globe. “I came here with no family and speaking no English. I’m going to keep fighting for my dream of being a nurse. This is my home, this is my country.”