Thursday, March 28, 2024

DREAMer says Democrats should not accept Trump’s DACA deal

President Trump is offering a three-year extension to DACA recipients, but one DREAMer is urging Democrats to reject the deal.

“I think they should absolutely not take this deal, and the reason why is because right now DACA is still in place,” she told the network’s Ana Cabrera. “Courts are upholding and protecting the program that President Obama passed, and we will continue to fight, but we will not do it at the expense of others” said Belen Sisa, a DREAMer who spoke with CNN on Sunday.

He is placing the proposal on the table as a bargaining chip to end the partial federal government shutdown, which was caused in part by his demands for more than $5 billion to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. As Sisa noted, there has been no end yet to the legal fight to keep the 2012 Obama-era initiative in place, and so far, it remains intact.

On Saturday, contrary to his sometimes-xenophobic remarks, Trump delivered a unifying statement in reaction to a naturalization ceremony that he participated in that day. The speech described U.S. citizenship as having “no distinctions or race or class or gender or background,” adding, “we are all equal” and “one team.”

To Sisa, the words were meaningless; “If anything, this sounds completely hypocritical,” she said in response. “His actions are not matching his speech. They’re not matching anything that he said.” Continuing to bash the remarks, Sisa contended that Trump “has been running this country and even campaigned on us not being equal.”

Though Trump announced the proposal on Saturday, it has already been turned down by many Democrats — including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) — who said it’s a one-sided push from the president to get $5.7 billion for his wall.

HUFFINGTON POST