Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) joined U.S. Senators Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and 37 other Senate Democrats in pressing U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem on the Trump Administration’s wrongful targeting of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients in its cruel mass deportation scheme.
The senators cited a troubling statement from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in which she said, “Illegal aliens who claim to be recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are not automatically protected from deportation.” The senators made clear that McLaughlin’s statement is contradicted by public DHS guidance.
“DACA was created to provide protections from immigration enforcement for certain noncitizens brought to the United States as children, also known as Dreamers, who undergo strict background checks and meet specific educational or work requirements,” wrote the senators. “In contrast to Ms. McLaughlin’s puzzling statement, public DHS guidance makes clear that DACA holders are ‘not considered to be unlawfully present’ in the United States and that ‘[a]n individual who has received deferred action is authorized by DHS to be in the United States for the duration of the deferred action period.’”
“We urge you to correct Assistant Secretary McLaughlin’s statement to accurately reflect DACA and ensure that DHS recognizes and abides by the protections of DACA moving forward,” continued the senators. “Recent enforcement actions against DACA recipients not only appear to violate the Fifth Circuit stay, but also disrupt families, harm communities, and inflict unnecessary social, emotional, and economic costs.”
The senators contrasted McLaughlin’s statement and the Administration’s actions regarding DACA with the overwhelming public support for Dreamers. They noted President Trump’s previously stated support for protections for Dreamers and emphasized that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals kept in place protections for current DACA holders and limited to Texas a nationwide injunction on new DACA approvals.
In June, 41 senators, including Cortez Masto, sent a letter to the Acting Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), urging the agency to resume processing new DACA applications, in line with the Fifth Circuit ruling. Instead, DHS has pushed DACA holders to “self-deport.” The administration also recently detained a deaf and non-verbal DACA holder with no criminal history, wasting taxpayer dollars and undermining the Trump Administration’s pledge to target the “worst of the worst” violent criminals.
Full text of the letter to Secretary Noem is available here.
The first and only Latina senator, Senator Cortez Masto has consistently supported immigrant communities in Nevada, calling on both the Biden and Trump administrations to protect DACA recipients, TPS holders and other immigrants, as well as leading commonsense legislation to fix our broken immigration system. She has worked to pass meaningful immigration reform that balances critical border security measures with a path to citizenship for Dreamers, TPS holders, and essential workers.
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