NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The push from Tennesseans to get the nation's highest court to support the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) could be felt from Washington D.C. to Nashville.
Jazmin Ramirez and her peers traveled to D.C.to rally on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. They joined thousands of people from across the U.S. to urge the justices to favor keeping a program that would protect DACA recipients or so-called Dreamers. The court, a 5 to 4 conservative majority, heard oral arguments and will review if the Trump administration's move to end the program in 2017 was legal.
"It was super powerful," Ramirez, a DACA recipient, told NewsChannel 5 over the phone. "It was overwhelming to see all the support and DACA recipients to come out."
Under the Obama administration, the program was enacted to protect nearly 700,000 undocumented young adults across the country who were brought to the U.S. as a child. There are reportedly 8,000 Dreamers in Tennessee, with about 3,500 of them in Nashville.
President Donald Trump wanted it to end a couple of years ago, but lower courts sided against him and led the case to the Supreme Court, which allowed young people under the program to reapply every two years. Trump has argued Obama overstepped his power when he used his executive order.
The Supreme Court justices are looking whether the government has proper rationale to stop DACA. They could announce a ruling in June.
Meanwhile, Trevecca Nazarene University held a round table discussion on the same day as the Supreme Court hearing to talk about the importance of DACA. President Dan Boone said it would be disruptive if the program were to end, and that the issue for him was not political but merely "love for neighbors." Boone had several community members in the discussion including an immigration attorney and two DACA students.
"The U.S. is all I've ever known," Yenin Echeverria said in the meeting. "Thanks to DACA I can apply to grad school."
Echeverria wants to pursue speech pathology at Vanderbilt University, but admits there is a cloud of uncertainty as the DACA argument moves through the federal government. She says on top of the constant worry of deportation, there is the financial burden as a DACA recipient of having to pay out-of-state tuition. While they may not get the federal benefits living in the U.S., Dreamers still pay taxes.
"Not only are they making huge economic impacts through their contributions as young leaders but they're giving back to their families. They're older and starting to buy homes and families and are very much a fabric of this community," Equal Chance for Education Executive Director Molly Haynes said.
Haynes' organization offers scholarships to Dreamers in Nashville who are not eligible for student loans or financial aid because of their legal status. ECE is helping more than 300 students in Tennessee and had 38 students graduate. There are 80 in Trevecca Nazarene University, one of 600 schools nationwide to join a list a couple of months ago demanding for Congress to come up with a legislation to protect their students.
