DACA

Today, Christians are continuing to pursue their political interests while imagining that God is fighting on their side. In the wake of the Court overturning Roe v. Wade, many conservative Christian leaders celebrated the decision as bringing about God’s kingdom on earth. On the other side of the pew, progressive Christians lamented the decision because of the devastating implications it holds for human rights both now and in the future. This leads me back to the question I asked myself in the wake of the Supreme Court rejecting Trump’s bid to eliminate DACA: Is God in control of the Court?

Democrats had hoped to include a provision in President Joe Biden’s proposed $3.5 trillion budget that would have given citizenship to millions, including Dreamer immigrants, brought to the United States as children, who are protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. But on Sept. 19, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough — a nonpartisan, unelected staff member who advises lawmakers about what is acceptable under the chamber's rules and precedents — advised against adding a provision for citizenship in the budget reconciliation process.

IN JUNE, NEARLY 700,000 DACA recipients could breathe a sigh of relief when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The court determined that the basis for President Trump’s action was “arbitrary and capricious.” The grounds presented for termination failed to consider the impact of the program’s rescission, wrote Chief Justice John Roberts.

The grounds of the ruling are important because the court did not address whether DACA was legal. For now, DACA remains fragile. People who have benefited from the program, put in place by executive action under President Barack Obama in 2012, can continue to obtain valid work permits and are protected from deportation.  An estimated 130,000 people would have been eligible to submit new applications for the program, except that the Trump administration released a memo on July 28 saying it would “reject all initial requests for DACA and associated applications for Employment Authorization Documents.”

This momentary reprieve and upsurge of hope resulted from decades of fierce social, political, and legal organizing by undocumented youth and their supporters, often at great personal risk. The Trump administration may decide to attack DACA again. It would likely be a costly undertaking since a substantial bipartisan majority of Americans support DACA.

While DACA prevents the eviction from the U.S. of a sector of immigrants, it does not dismantle the massive deportation machine that operates in this country nor create a pathway to citizenship—key components of comprehensive immigration reform. Authentic immigration reform begins with the recognition that U.S. immigration laws, from their inception, have been informed by discriminatory narratives. The first immigration law, the Naturalization Act of 1790, made it possible for those born elsewhere to become citizens—but only if they were “free white persons” (“white” meaning certain Europeans, and “persons” essentially meaning men), excluding enslaved people, Native Americans, those without property, most women, and all others not defined as white. Only property-owning white male citizens could vote.

Immigrants have been willing to carry these oppressive burdens because there are no other options to make a way for our status in the system. The mantras playing in our head are the horrific echoes of a system that values immigrant people because of their economic contribution and slowly takes away their breath in favor of building an empire.

The Supreme Court is expected to make final decision on future of DACA soon.

The United States, in particular, is abandoning our founding principles and those that have sustained our position as the aspirational bastion of freedom and opportunity. Our failure is reprehensible: Even as we fail to protect children, we are daily compounding their trauma and harm through policies detention and separation. History will remember the cruelty of this administration, the atrophy of moral leadership, and the apathy of the American people.

The DACA oral arguments drew thousands of protesters, DACA recipients, faith leaders, and organizers to the steps of the Supreme Court.

DURING THE Easter season Christians commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, after the devastation of Good Friday, when Christ was crucified. From darkness to light, from pain to healing, from despair to hope, from defeat to victory, from death to life. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation for our hope as Christians, even—and especially—when it’s hardest to have any hope, like at a time such as this.

I often quote Hebrews 11:1, which says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” especially around Easter. I often paraphrase the text as, “Hope means believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change.”

It’s appropriate that, as Christians, we believe in a radical hope, a hope that often comes “in spite of the evidence.” Easter Sunday, which we just celebrated, is the perpetual reminder of the hope that comes when things seem most hopeless. We Christians say we are a resurrection people, and Easter Sunday both reminds us and dares us to prove it—that we are a people who can live our lives in hope, despite the evidence.

In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that delayed the Trump administration's March 5 deadline, leaders from the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, Esperanza, Christian Community Development Association, Bread for the World, as well as U.S. Catholic bishops referenced Matthew 25 to address the biblical calling to "treat the immigrant with dignity, respect and love, providing the same welcome that we ourselves would hope for."