DACA recipients protest Trump outside Texas state Capitol

Allies, youth and parents of DACA beneficiaries urged the Trump administration and Texas government officials to keep the Obama-era program.

“Today, DACAmented youth and allies are taking direct action in the first sit-in of the Trump Era in Texas to show the world that we are #OutragedandUnafraid. This is only the beginning,” the organizing group, Cosecha, said on its website. “We won DACA because we took action. We organized, we marched, we sat in. We came out of the shadows by taking unprecedented actions. This has been the only strategy that has not failed us. Now, as our community faces a new wave of threats, we’re being called to do it again.”

Of the fewer than 50 people in attendance, four DACA recipients and 11 others were arrested mid-Wednesday for blocking traffic outside of the state Capitol, according to a statement from Cosecha. DACA recipients could risk deportation if charged and convicted because that would violate the terms of their DACA benefits.

“I want my community to know that politicians do not get to decide who is deserving of dignity and who is not,” Catalina Santiago, one of the DACA recipients arrested Wednesday, said in a statement. “I am getting arrested today to tell my parents, my community, and the rest of the 11 million that no matter what politicians say, you are worthy and we will not settle for the crumbs they offer us in exchange for being the economic and labor force that sustains this country day in and day out.”

Organizers selected Austin for the protest because Texas recently passed a policy banning sanctuary cities, and is seen as unfriendly to illegal immigrants and those with temporary legal presence.

Texas and nine other states gave Trump until September 5 to repeal DACA, but the White House has been silent about what it is planning.

In June, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded an Obama-era immigration policy that had allowed for deferred action for parents of Americans and lawful permanent residents, which was known as DAPA.

DHS Secretary John Kelly signed a memo directing his employees not to carry out an instruction his predecessor, Jeh Johnson, had put in writing in November 2014 that sought to extend a 2012 program aimed at illegal immigrants.

Kelly made the decision to revoke the policy because “there is no credible path forward to litigate the currently enjoined policy” due to its current entanglement in the courts, his office said in a statement.

However, immigration groups are increasingly doubtful Trump will end the DACA program after the Department of Homeland Security announced last week that recipients of the Obama-era program were safe for the unforeseen future.

Four national organizations representing a variety of immigration stances told the Washington Examiner the White House has been silent on the issue, and has not told even the groups that support Trump how it plans to go forward. That silence, according to two groups who supported Trump’s immigration positions as a candidate, indicates the idea of DACA reform is not stalled, but dead.

“If the president had decided to end DACA, it would have happened. I don’t know what they are waiting for. He promised to end DACA,” Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, told the Examiner in June. “Once you say something is illegal and unconstitutional, you can’t just keep doing it.”

New data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ second fiscal quarter shows 107,524 DACA renewals and 17,275 new applications were approved from January to March, approximately 70 percent of which happened under the Trump administration.