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Youth Activists Protest Texas DACA Decision

Mark Keierleber — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 20:58:20 +0000

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Immigrant-rights activists rallied outside a Houston courthouse on Monday demanding the Biden administration act swiftly to protect them after a federal judge halted an Obama-era program that provides deportation relief and work permits to hundreds of thousands of undocumented residents brought here as children.

“It hurts deeply that my home state, the place I’ve grown up in and have grown to love, is the one leading the charge against me and my right to live and work,” Susana Lujano, a 28-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, said at the gathering organized by the immigrant-rights group United We Dream. Lujano, who has lived in Texas since she was 2, called the latest ruling — one in a long series that has left the fate of the so-called Dreamers in turmoil — “cruel and vindictive.”

On Friday, barred any new applications to the DACA program, creating uncertainty for thousands of first-time applicants who sought its protection. While Judge Andrew Hanen of the U.S. District Court in Houston let the status of the more than 600,000 current DACA recipients stand, the George W. Bush appointee found the Obama administration overstepped its authority when it created the program in 2012.

Referring to DACA as an “illegally implemented program,” Hanen wrote that “the public interest of the nation is always served by the cessation of a program that was created in violation of law.” His position echoed that of the Trump administration, which sought to end DACA under the premise that it was illegally created by the Obama administration without congressional approval. Though polls have consistently found , immigration reform has stalled in Congress for years.

President Joe Biden has the case brought by Texas and other Republican-led states. Under what the president called a “deeply disappointing” ruling, current recipients aren’t immediately affected but the Department of Homeland Security is prohibited from approving new applications. The move is particularly damning for those young people whose applicants were awaiting approval but were snagged in a backlog caused by the pandemic.

Among them is Andrea Anaya, who was born in El Salvador and raised in Maryland. Anaya said she applied for DACA for the first time in February but was still waiting on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to process her application.

Friday’s ruling “means I continue to be exposed to the threat of deportation and don’t know if my DACA application will ever be approved,” she said in a media release. “I shouldn’t have to fight to prove that my life and my existence matter.”

Joe, I’m tired of hope and your well wishes. I want certainty of my livelihood. Do something, you’re THE President of the United States. Keep your promise.

— Andrea Anaya (@andreajanaya)

Lujano said she was “heartbroken” that those who applied for DACA protections for the first time this year “won’t be able to have the same peace of mind that I had when I was approved.”

The administration’s intent to appeal means DACA could make its way back to the U.S. Supreme Court absent congressional action. In a statement, Biden called on Congress to pass legislation that provides permanent protection to DACA recipients. Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director of United We Dream, urged Congress to include a pathway to citizenship in its upcoming budget.

“Today’s ruling is evidence that DACA is not enough,” she said in a press release. “The program has always been temporary, leaving hundreds of thousands of lives vulnerable to the next attack.”

DACA recipients — and young immigrants applying for the program for the first time — have lived in a state of limbo since the Trump administration announced efforts to end it in 2017 and its fate has been the subject of back-and-forth court decisions. In June 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration failed to provide “a reasoned explanation” for its decision to terminate DACA and failed to consider how ending it could affect its beneficiaries.

Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., on Monday, immigrant rights advocates marched to the White House, where they demanded that Biden include a pathway to citizenship for undocumented residents in the American Jobs Plan.

Critics of the Obama-era immigration policy were quick to cheer on the Texas ruling. Robert Law, director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports restrictive immigration policies, praised the ruling, but said the judge’s unwillingness to terminate the program for current recipients “neuters the impact of his decision.” The federal judge noted that hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients and their employers rely on the program and therefore “it is not equitable for a government program that has engendered such a significant reliance to terminate suddenly.”

“Establishing a ‘reliance interest’ for an illegal program for illegal aliens takes the winds out of the sails of advocates for the rule of law,” Law wrote in a press release. Allowing current recipients to keep their benefits makes the ruling “yet another mostly symbolic victory.”

As lawmakers in Washington debate the Dreamers’ fate, Lujano made clear at the Houston rally that the status quo is unsustainable.

“I don’t want to be here temporarily anymore. This is my home. I’ve grown up here, I love this state,” she said, pointing to her pink hat embroidered with the word “HOME” and a Texas illustration. “It hurts to love it so much. It hurts to love it when it seems to hate me.”

Former Obama Schools Chief Launches Bid to Become MD Governor

Kevin Mahnken — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 21:48:16 +0000

Highlighting his experience as a former teacher and school founder, former U.S. Secretary of Education John King unveiled his 2022 campaign for governor of Maryland on Tuesday in an announcement steeped in talk of education, opportunity and inequality.

A cabinet appointee of former President Barack Obama, King could become both the state’s first African American governor and the rare candidate to win office from a perch in federal education politics. In an introductory video posted to Twitter, the first-time candidate, who most recently served as the president and CEO of the nonprofit Education Trust, strongly emphasized his ties to public schools.

“The great thing about the idea of a teacher as governor is that teachers know we have to start with listening to our students, seeing each of our students as whole people,” King said. “That’s how a governor should think.”

The former cabinet secretary’s identification with educators could help swing a Democratic primary in which their support will be vital — but prior friction with teachers’ unions may also complicate his run.

King’s bid makes him one of a slew of Democrats seeking the inside track in a party primary that won’t be settled until next June. Peter Franchot, the state’s long-serving comptroller, is considered an and name recognition, and former Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in 2018, has also the race.

With Republican Gov. Larry Hogan unable to seek a third term, the field will likely grow in the coming months: Popular author and Baltimore native Wes Moore, founder of the education-related tech platform BridgeEdU, is , and former Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez (like King, an Obama administration alumnus) is as well. National forecasters are , one of the bluest states in the country, a plum target for Democratic takeover next year.

If his rollout is any indication, King will rely on a few personal assets to negate his lack of campaign experience or deep ties to Maryland politics. One is his inspirational biography: Orphaned at the age of 12 and later expelled from high school, he said career educators “saved his life” by pushing him to overcome emotional turmoil and earn three Ivy League degrees.

“The thing that saved me was [that] I was blessed to have phenomenal public school teachers who made school a place that was safe and compelling and engaging,” he declared in his campaign video.

While King spent much of his career in New York and Massachusetts, he can also lay claim to a powerful connection to Maryland: His great-grandfather was just 25 miles from where he now lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

David Steiner, the executive director of Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Education Policy and King’s predecessor as New York State commissioner of education, said in an email to ��Ӱ�� that he was delighted to see King run, praising his “courage and passion for progress.”

“He has been through so much as a human being that he has learned to bracket out what isn’t essential to his work. And what is essential for John is finding the strongest pathways to create equity of opportunity for all those who lack it. My simple suggestion to my fellow Marylanders: just listen and judge.”

Reform background

But King’s long experience in the K-12 arena could prove a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, the state might be well-served with an experienced education bureaucrat at the helm. Just last year, legislators voted for of state education financing, allocating over $4 billion over the next decade to expand public pre-K, send more aid to high-poverty schools, and raise teacher pay. Though the new outlays were by last year’s COVID-related drop in local revenues, Democrats in Annapolis used new federal funding to — known as the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future — in the state budget earlier this month.

King that he regards the recently enacted Blueprint “as the floor, not the ceiling,” and that he would favor an even more ambitious education agenda including universal preschool across the state.

At the same time, the fledgling candidate’s prior experience as an education reformer, including his leadership of a in Boston, could play against him while courting Democratic votes next spring. Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, King for his tenure as New York schools’ chief, and King’s relationships with the unions were while he served as deputy education secretary under Arne Duncan.

The Maryland State Education Association, the largest teacher’s union in the state, will likely play a huge role in selecting the nominee. Four years ago, they defeat Baker in his primary fight against eventual nominee Ben Jealous, the former head of the NAACP.

Gail Sunderman, a research scientist at the University of Maryland and the founder of the Maryland Equity Project, told ��Ӱ�� in an email that it was “encouraging to have someone running for governor of Maryland who is putting education and equity so prominently at the center of his campaign.”

“He has a compelling story that links him to Maryland,” she wrote. “While he has an impressive resume, it will be interesting to see how his relative newness to Maryland politics plays out.”