Student and teacher react to DACA ruling

The U.S Citizen and Immigration Services is an agency that has been helping immigrants for almost 30 years. Programs are available for immigrants to assure security within the immigration system. This includes a program called DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival. This gives certain undocumented immigrants, who are called Dreamers, legal residency and protection against deportation until they can gain citizenship. There are Dreamers all around the nation, including in the Westside community. We interviewed social studies teacher David Bywater and one anonymous source about their thoughts and experiences with immigration.

“My father has been in the USA for 32 years, and has been working for 20 years,” anonymous said. “He’s tried to become a legal citizen, but some paperwork fell through.”

This student at Westside has first handedly seen the struggle immigrants, such as their father, go through to obtain citizenship. Obtaining citizenship can be a long process, it can take 6 months to 25 years, but by following the guidelines that Dreamers are given, the process can be shortened.

“Changing immigration policy is not something you can do by executive order,” Bywater said.

Even as president of the United States, Trump cannot change certain policies by executive order just because he wants to. If he did try and change a policy by executive order, it could always be overturned if the order is not supported by the constitution.

“I didn’t know he was undocumented at first but when I found out from my mom I was shocked and scared,” anonymous said. “I didn’t know what could happen.”

If this student’s undocumented father was found, he would be arrested. Then Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, would take him into custody and decide whether or not he should be sent back to the his country. The turnaround process for deportation takes 48 hours or less. Her father would have two days to pick up the life he created for himself here in America and leave back to his birth country.

Deportation happens, but it’s rare to catch an undocumented citizen if they are following and respecting the American laws.

“You see the hyped media say that we’re returning these people, keeping in mind no one’s going to round these people up and send them home,” Bywater said.

Trump is planning to pause the DACA program but has given congress 6 months to figure out what to do about the program before doing so. Though the program may be coming to an end, some Dreamers could obtain citizenship, and others could be deported.