Dreamers Are Americans, Period.

And they deserve permanent relief, now. “No daughter should have to live like this,” said the child of a recently-deported DACA recipient. “No family should be torn apart like this”

A DACA recipient has blasted the Trump administration’s ongoing detention and deportation of Dreamers, unequivocally stating that the federal government has broken a years-old promise by targeting hundreds of beneficiaries who were approved for relief, have been following the rules, and know no other country but this one as their home.

“The detention and deportation of DACA recipients is unacceptable, unconscionable, and a betrayal of the promises made by the U.S. government when immigrant youth trusted their information, their persons, and their families to DHS,” Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, Deputy Director of Federal Advocacy at United We Dream, said during a Capitol Hill press event Tuesday. She was flanked by other affected individuals at the event, which was sponsored by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Democratic Women’s Caucus, the New Democrat Coalition, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, according to advisory received by America’s Voice.

Macedo do Nascimento noted that despite the fact that the DACA program is a “legal program” that has been reaffirmed “time after time by the courts for over 14 years,” nearly 90 DACA beneficiaries have been deported while more than 270 others have been detained, confirming ongoing fears that program beneficiaries are being targeted despite holding deportation protections, work permits, and Social Security numbers.

She noted the shocking case of Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez, who was deported overnight after more than two decades here. The DACA recipient was at her green card appointment with all her necessary documentation in hand when she was suddenly approached by a plainclothes agent. Despite the fact that Estrada Juarez was being sponsored by her U.S. citizen daughter, had valid protections from family separation, and had called this country her home for 25 years, she was deported 24 hours later. 

Her daughter, Damaris Bello, later said that she felt like her mom “never had a chance. It felt like we just walked into a trap.” Estrada Juarez “said federal agents with no identification or marked uniforms cuffed her feet and hands, ‘like I was the most wanted criminal in the whole United States. I never felt so humiliated,’ she said emotionally,” ABC10 reported. During the Tuesday press event, Bello said she continues to struggle to understand “how something like this can happen in a country that talks so much about fairness and justice.”

“My mom didn’t hurt anyone,” she said. “She showed up because she believed in the promise that if you follow the rules, things will work out. Instead, that trust was used against her. Now I wake up every day in Sacramento without my mom. I go through life pretending to be strong, but the truth is, I feel like a piece of my life has been ripped away.” 

“We are demanding answers on why DHS continues to unlawfully detain and deport DACA recipients,” Macedo do Nascimento continued, urging members of Congress “to demand DHS stop this practice and resume honoring the promises made, not only to DACA recipients, but TPS holders, asylum-seekers, and refugees.”

The demand that the federal government honor its promise came as more than 40 Democratic members of the U.S. Senate launched an inquiry into the administration’s slow-walking of DACA renewals. “Across the country, DACA recipients are reporting significant processing delays for their renewal applications.” These delays, senators said, “can have profound consequences.”

“When renewals are not processed before expiration, recipients lose employment authorization and, in many cases, their jobs,” senators said. “Employers experience workforce disruptions, including in sectors such as health care and education and in small businesses. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizen children have a parent with DACA, and when their work authorization lapses due to slow renewals, families endure heightened financial instability.”

And these consequences of these delays reverberate far beyond family unity. The Center for American Progress estimated that in 2022, “more than 482,000 DACA recipients were in the workforce, collectively earning nearly $27.9 billion and contributing nearly $2.1 billion to Social Security and Medicare annually. In addition, their employers contributed more than $1.6 billion in payroll taxes toward Social Security and Medicare on these DACA recipients’ behalf.”

Other attendees at the Tuesday event included America’s Voice Research Associate Yuna Oh, who said that as a former DACA recipient she understands the duress her peers are facing on a constant basis. “I feel for them, and I relate to them,” she said. “The feeling of being ousted from the only country they know, and love is one I felt during Trump’s first presidential term, and his second term is only worse.” She noted Dreamers “are being denied access to DACA, and families and schools and classrooms and businesses are uncertain about the future of the DACAmented Dreamers they rely on.”

“All of it makes the case for Congress finally doing what the American people have been strongly supporting for two decades – a legislative solution that officially recognizes Dreamers as the Americans they already are,” Oh continued.

The need for permanent relief is more urgent than ever. In yet another example of the entirely preventable crisis facing Dreamers, the federal government abducted a DACA recipient as he was on his way to visit his newborn, premature infant in NICU, MS Now reports.

“Twelve days after his youngest daughter was born prematurely, Juan Chavez Velasco was on his way to deliver milk to her hospital room — still in his own neighborhood in Weslaco, Texas — when immigration agents pulled in front of his car,” the report said. “His wife, Stephanie Villarreal, 32, was on the phone with him and heard the agents yell at him to get out of the vehicle.”

“He told them he had children. He told them he had a wife. He told them he had DACA. He remembers their response,” the report continued. “That doesn’t matter,” the agent said. The DACA recipient said he never got a chance to hug his daughter goodbye before they took him away. He’s currently detained at the Webb County Detention Center in Laredo, Texas.

DACA recipients “are contributing to America,” Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat (NY-13) said during the Tuesday press event. “They live in all the states, they reside in all the states of the union. So [protecting them] should be a bipartisan effort. I think it should be a bipartisan effort also to stop ICE from inflicting this kind of fear and hurt on them.” And, it’s also a matter of acting for DACA recipients because it’s the just thing to do. “No daughter should have to live like this,” as Bello continued in her remarks. “No family should be torn apart like this.”