Nationwide Protests Hit the Streets After Trump Decision to End Dreamer Protections

Dreamers will pressure Congress to pass legislation that gives them legal status in the United States.

Protesters marched from the White House to Trump International Hotel on September 5 in support of Dreamers affected by President Donald Trump's decision to end DACA.Noah Lanard/Mother Jones

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Across the country, undocumented immigrants and their allies are taking to the streets to protest President Donald Trump’s decision to phase out protections from deportation for nearly 800,000 young immigrants known as Dreamers.

Under the terms set by the Trump administration on Tuesday, Congress has six months to pass legislation before Dreamers begin to lose their protected status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program created by President Barack Obama in 2012. After Dreamers’ DACA permits expire, they will become subject to possible detention and deportation.

In Washington, DC, hundreds of people marched from the White House to Trump International Hotel, chanting “Yes We Can,” “Move Trump; get out the way,” and “We are the immigrants, the mighty, mighty immigrants.”

In New York, a dozen protesters were arrested for staging a sit-in outside Trump Tower.

https://twitter.com/cora/status/905123668891762688

 

Credit: ABC 7 New York

In Denver, hundreds of students walked out of class to protest Trump’s decision.

Dreamers have vowed to fight for their right to stay in the United States. In Washington, Rainy Leonor, a 23-year-old DACA recipient who took a bus down from Reading, Pennsylvania, told Mother Jones, “We knew this day was going to come, but we didn’t think it was going to be so fast.” Leonor, who has been protected by DACA since 2013, said the next step is to pressure as many members of Congress as possible to act. Like many Dreamers, Leonor said she was uncertain about DACA’s future:.”You never know,” she said. “You never know where this may go.”

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate