During a press conference in support of the bipartisan DREAM Act, California Sen. Kamala Harris said she’s prepared to not back a key spending bill if it doesn’t include a congressional fix protecting undocumented immigrant youth stripped of their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protections by the Trump administration:
"I will not vote for an end-of-year spending bill until we are clear about what we are going to do to protect and take care of our DACA young people in this country," Harris said. "Each day in the life of these young people is a very long time, and we've got to stop playing politics with their lives."
No other state stands to feel DACA’s rescission like California, where one-quarter of the nation’s 800,000 DACA recipients live, work, and go to school. And they’re afraid. Sen. Harris said she’s heard first-hand from these young immigrants, who approach her in public “to talk about their experience and their fears. It is often the case that they will then break down and sob almost uncontrollably because they are terrified.”
Sen. Harris:
“They don’t know what their future will be for the next couple of weeks or months. And these are young people who are in our colleges, and we have our great educational institutions that we are very proud of in California and New York here. They are in our colleges, they are in graduate school. They are serving in the military. They are working in Fortune 100 companies. They are contributing. And they’re playing by the rules.”
“Right now we are at a moment in time where we have got to understand that this is something we cannot play politics with, when we have hundreds of thousands of young people who are terrified because we have not been able to keep our word,” Sen. Harris continued. “That tells us all we’ve got some work to do.”
“Senator Harris is right,” said Greisa Martinez, a leader with United We Dream. “Every day that Congress drags their feet is another day that immigrant youth lose their protection from deportation, and we need champions in Congress to step up like Sen. Kamala Harris has done.”
“Members of Congress cannot sit back and wait for the legislative process to unfold—this is a time to lead the way on passing a clean Dream Act before the holidays.”