Nearly 800,000 people are in danger of losing their country, losing their home, losing their family, and losing everything they’ve ever worked for. They all face being sent to an unknown land, with a foreign language, and unfamiliar faces. All of this is because of the president, Donald Trump and a group of republican Congressmen. The people we are addressing: undocumented immigrants.
In 2012, the Obama Administration established the policy Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, more commonly known as DACA. This immigration policy grants minors who illegally entered the United States a two-year period of deferred action from deportation. It gives them access to work permits and requires them to earn education with employment.
Unfortunately, in early September, President Trump announced in the Justice Department that he was ending DACA, a decision that was strongly urged by the republican Congressmen. However, he abruptly backtracked on his plans and instead gave Congress six months to come up with a replacement plan to mitigate the immigration “issue.”
Historically, President Trump is known for voicing his thoughts on immigrants, including the tweet he sent out in 2015 that said, “Notice that illegal immigrants will be given ObamaCare and free college tuition but nothing has been mentioned about our VETERANS #DemDebate.”
Even though he recognized the benefits that immigrants should be getting, with the power of his presidency, he has taken his opinion too far with official actions that could truly harm thousands of people.
The short window of opportunity in which DACA could be saved has left many people who are a part of the program in much stress and worry for their future. Their six months is almost coming to an end. SJHHS has started the Latinos Unidos Club, which has a goal of creating a safe environment for DACA students and educating others about what DACA is.

When arguing against DACA, President Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, said DACA has “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs,” and President Trump later on said that millions of Americans “[are] victimized by this unfair system.”
The arguments of our current president and his Attorney General are not only unprofessional but also inaccurate. The Center for American Progress has estimated the deportation of DACA workers would cost the United States $433 billion over the next 10 years in gross domestic product.
This income comes from the money that DACA recipients pay annually for social security without even receiving the benefits, a fact often overlooked by the opposers of the program.
Therefore, contrary to what President Trump, General Sessions, and their supporters believe, DACA recipients are providing for the United States’s economy and are not only humans who deserve freedom, but are also vital to the function of society.
Obama created issues in 2012 when he had 12 executive orders that concerned DACA invalidated by the court, nonetheless, there were only benevolent intentions behind it. He could have handled the situation with better treatment towards Congress but that doesn’t take away from the fact that he was trying to save the lives that 800,000 people have built in the United States.

Our current president, on the other hand, is retweeting posts from accounts that criticize illegal immigration such as one that said “make no mistake, we are going to put the interest of AMERICAN CITIZENS FIRST! The forgotten men & women will no longer be forgotten.”
President Donald Trump has no sympathy for the futures of nearly 800,000 people who are all currently fighting for their identity. The removal of DACA is simply a side effect of President Trump’s incapacity to control what he says and his habit of abruptly doing what is on his mind. These are thousands of lives that he is stripping away and it can not be treated lightly.