Immigrant advocates in Tucson called out Republican opposition to President Obama’s executive action on immigration even as they stressed that those challenges would prove futile.
Gathered outside the Arizona State Building downtown Tuesday, about 20 people held signs in Spanish that read “Yes we can with DACA” and “You, me, we are America” to protest a federal judge’s decision to temporarily block deferred action programs that could potentially benefit more than 4 million people.
“We’re asking Republicans to stop playing games and wasting taxpayer money,” said Eduardo Sainz with Mi Familia Vota. “Right now they’re spending millions in courts that will ultimately rule in favor of executive action.”
Arizona is part of a lawsuit filed by 26 states against the federal government claiming the president’s move on immigration exceeded his authority and would put a financial burden on the states.
Advocates had initially planned to celebrate the implementation of the first part of the executive action on immigration, the expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which was to begin Wednesday.
The expansion allows more undocumented immigrants that were brought to the United States as young children, known as “dreamers,” to be eligible for work permits and protection from deportation.
Under the new DACA guidelines, an additional 7,000 people in Arizona would be eligible for the program, including 1,000 in Pima County, according to a study by the Migration Policy Institute. They would join the 32,000 immigrants in the state already eligible under the original 2012 program.
“I hope this is only temporary because I don’t know what will happen if they block it,” said Brenda Armendáriz, who came here from her native Sonora 10 years ago. “The hope that they gave us will be taken away and the faith we have in this country would falter.”
Armendáriz has two children who do not qualify for deferred action and two children who were born in Tucson. Through her U.S. citizen children, she and her husband are eligible for Deferred Action for Parental Accountability, a program that was scheduled to begin May 19.
She said she avoided the news Tuesday morning because she was afraid of what she would hear.
“I came here with the hopes they would tell us they hadn’t blocked it or that nothing had changed,” she said.
Anabel Moreno, mother of a 17-year-old who is a DACA recipient, said she wasn’t worried but that the holdup did shake her confidence.
Although current deferred action recipients are not affected by the ruling, for Moreno it’s part of the larger struggle for immigration relief.
“We were supposed to get the expansion. If anything I’m disillusioned,” she said. “But we have faith that everything will be all right, that it will all turn out well for the immigrant community.”
Advocates called the judge’s actions a stalling tactic that would be quickly overturned by a higher court and emphasized that eligible immigrants should not be discouraged but continue to prepare to apply for deferred action.
“What they want is to confuse people. We should instead be informed, educate ourselves and know what this really means,” Sainz said. “People should get involved and read beyond the headlines.”
