Donald Trump can threaten to never concede the election, barricade himself in the Oval Office, and file ridiculous lawsuit after ridiculous lawsuit until the cows come home, but come noon on January 20, 2021, he will no longer be president. President-elect Joe Biden (it feels great to write that!) will take over and has plans to “immediately” begin reversing some of his predecessor’s anti-immigrant policies, The Washington Post reports.
Specifically named in the report as a Day One priority is a reversal of the discriminatory "Muslim ban” (which affected people “from majority-Muslim nations other than ones he personally had business interests in,” Daily Kos’ Hunter noted over the weekend), and full reimplementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which the impeached president has waged a relentless war against since 2017. He’s lost.
Reports of the program’s full reimplementation on the first day of a new Biden administration should come at great relief for the hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries and families who had been anxiously awaiting election results.
Among them is Luz Chavez, a college student and one of two children in her family protected by the program. Unable to vote herself, she encouraged others to use their vote to protect families like hers. “Every single policy put in place by folks that people elect into office directly impact my family, my community, and directly impact me,” she told BuzzFeed News last week. “There's so much at stake here.”
The wait was over on Saturday this past weekend, when Biden was projected to have crossed the 270 electoral vote threshold and become the 46th president of the United States. DACA recipient Geraldine Chinga told CNN she found out about Biden’s win and Trump’s defeat as she was out running errands. ”I'm a dreamer and I can dream again," she told CNN, saying that she cried. "I was just in tears. I was thanking God and the people who helped us vote. And gave us a voice. We can't vote but right now, I just want to hug every single voter.”
But they aren’t the only young people celebrating. Because Trump has for well over 100 days defied court rulings ordering him to fully reinstate the program, thousands of potential new applicants who have become old enough to apply for DACA since Trump first rescinded it in 2017 may also soon become eligible to apply. Among those waiting is Ximena Zamora, who told The Appeal in September that she was disillusioned following the administration’s defiance. “To be in the same place where I was three years ago is very frustrating,” she said.
In anticipation of the program’s reported reimplementation early next year, former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro announced on Twitter that he would be relaunching his campaign’s famous “Adiós Trump” shirt, with proceeds to benefit DACA renewal applications. Castro, his website said, “envisioned the moment where America says ‘adiós’ to Donald Trump. That moment has come.”
Reimplementing DACA must be just a start of our overall goal however, which is to ultimately win permanent relief for young undocumented immigrants and their families. “Protecting DACA is the floor, not the ceiling, of what a Biden-Harris administration must do,” United We Dream executive director Greisa Martinez Rosas said in a statement received by Daily Kos. “Biden must be unapologetic about pursuing every executive and legislative path to protect immigrants and include immigrants in recovery packages to respond to our health and economic crises.”
Just as Trump and soon-to-be-former White House aide Stephen Miller were relentless in using the power of the executive to hurt families, we must be relentless in using it to protect families. And, of course, we must do everything in our power to win back the Senate, which hinges on the outcome of two seats in Georgia. But as we fight those battles, there’s no doubt that news that DACA could be set to be put fully back in place as soon as the first day one will provide many with an important and much-needed sigh of relief.
