Protecting the Right to Liberty and Due Process for Dreamers

President Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program upended the lives of some 700,000 Dreamers – young undocumented people who were brought to this country as children. In September 2017, thousands of DACA recipients learned they only had weeks to renew their two-year work permits one final time before the program would end.

In an effort to help those eligible for renewal, Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project sprang into action, holding a series of DACA Renewal Clinics. Our goal was to serve 80 Dreamers. Because of the extraordinary efforts of our staff and volunteers, however, we were able to help 200 young people in the short time before the deadline set by the President! Thanks to a private donor and a volunteer’s crowdfunding efforts, we were also able to cover the $495 filing fee for all participants.

Public Counsel held two emergency workshops to help more than 200 Dreamers renew their DACA protections one final time before the program was set to terminate. Volunteer Steve Lichtman (right) — shown with brothers Jose (center) and Francisco (left) — raised thousands of dollars through crowdfunding efforts!

However, more needed to be done. The federal government had made extensive promises about the DACA program to entice people to sign up and provide sensitive personal information. It had advertised that the program would provide opportunities and safe harbor for participants. DACA recipients shared with us the life-altering decisions they made based on the government’s promises. One opened a law office. Another became a teacher. A third went to medical school. We realized that hundreds of thousands of DACA youth had made similar choices. We concluded that it was fundamentally unfair, and against the law, for the government to violate its word and rip those opportunities away from Dreamers without a compelling reason.

Dulce Garcia (left) and Miriam Gonzalez, are two of the brave Dreamers suing the Trump Administration to stop the repeal of the DACA program. Dulce is an immigration attorney and opened her own law practice thanks to the DACA program. Miriam is an elementary school teacher in Los Angeles.

In response, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of six Dreamers to challenge the government’s unconstitutional decision to end the DACA program. It was the first lawsuit filed by DACA beneficiaries themselves, and the complaint vividly described how they had relied on the promises the government made and how their lives would be impacted if the program were ended. U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued a nationwide injunction in our case and cases brought by the State of California and the University of California, blocking the government from ending renewals for DACA recipients already in the program. The case is now before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and has the potential to block the Trump Administration from ending the DACA program.

Plaintiff Jirayut (“New”) Latthivongskorn is a DACA recipient pursuing both a medical degree from UC San Francisco and a Master of Public Health degree from Harvard University.