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By Lauren Lifke
Nearly 40 Senate Democrats, including Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), signed a letter last week calling out the Trump administration’s targeting of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients in its move to increase deportation.
The DACA program, implemented more than a decade ago, allows for some immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children to work and live in the country without fearing deportation. DACA recipients are “not considered to be unlawfully present” in the country while their DACA status is in effect, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
In a press release Friday, Heinrich and Luján’s offices condemned a recent statement from Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in which they said she contradicted public DHS guidance.
“Illegal aliens who claim to be recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are not automatically protected from deportation,” McLaughlin said, according to the press release.
The letter, addressed to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, urges her to correct McLaughlin’s statement.
The letter cites DHS guidance indicating that “an individual who has received deferred action is authorized by DHS to be in the United States for the duration of the deferred action period.”
In June, Heinrich and Luján were part of a group of 41 Senate Democrats who urged the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to resume processing new DACA applications.
In July, Heinrich introduced the Project DREAMer Confidentiality Act to protect DACA recipients’ private information from being used against them.
“Actions like this one, targeting DACA holders who are lawfully in the United States, and who have committed no crime, help explain why a majority of the American public disapproves of the Trump Administration’s track record on immigration,” the letter reads.
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