Arizona activists reject Trump’s immigration deal for border wall funds
Jan 22, 2019, 12:25 PM | Updated: 1:01 pm
PHOENIX — President Donald Trump’s offer to extend temporary protections from deportation to young, undocumented immigrants to secure border wall funding and reopen the government is meeting resistance from Arizona activists.
Trump offered on Saturday to protect nearly 700,000 recipients under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that granted temporary work permits to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children, if Democrats give him $5.7 billion for his long-promised border wall.
Trump promoted his plan as a way to “break the logjam and provide Congress with a path forward to end the government shutdown,” which has been in place since Dec. 22.
Nearly 1 million government employees and contractors aren’t being paid. Many federal parks have also been closed and airport employees are calling out of work, causing delays.
But two immigration rights activists from Arizona — who are also DACA recipients — said the deal is just another way Trump is using immigrants as a bargaining tool.
“This is another case where (Trump) wants to get what he wants to get, which is the wall, and he’s using DACA recipients, which are one of the people in the immigrant community who are known and well liked…so it’s easy to use us,” Erika Andiola told KTAR News 92.3 FM on Monday.
“In my view, it’s ridiculous to take away DACA…and now say, ‘I’m going to give you the program back for $5 billion to build the wall,'” she added.
“I am in awe that he would think that is enough to come to the table and try to negotiate with Democrats around this.”
The Trump administration brought an end to the DACA program in 2017, with then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling it an “unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch.”
But a U.S. District Court judge ruled last January that the program must remain in place while litigation unfolds, a decision that was upheld by a U.S. appeals court in November.
Andiola said if Trump wants to help the so-called Dreamers, he should end the partial shutdown — which has reached 32 days as of Tuesday — and pass a permanent immigration deal.
“Trump cant get anything for Dreamers on his own,” she said. “If he wants to help Dreamers, it is important for them to go back to Congress and pass something that is permanent.”
Belen Sisa, who has been arrested multiple times while advocating for immigrants, told KTAR News that Trump’s proposed deal would also throw other immigrants under the bus.
“A border wall is a narrow way to think of immigration,” she said on Monday. “Most immigrants aren’t coming from the Mexican border, they’re coming from all over the world.
“Many are coming with visitors’ visas and overstaying them, so if a wall would fix the problem, we wouldn’t have a solution for a long time,” she added.
“Instead of trying to pass legislation to make sure that 11 million people are legalized, (Trump’s) trying to put up barriers. And we should not give into that. We should not give into xenophobia and racism by putting up a wall that divides us.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the proposal was “a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable.”
The California Democrat said Trump’s offer was “not a good-faith effort” to help the immigrants and could not pass the House.
Democrats criticized the expected proposal because it didn’t seem to be a permanent solution for those immigrants and because it includes money for the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, which the party strongly opposes. Democrats also want Trump to reopen the government before talks can start.
A recent KTAR News/OH Predictive Insights poll found that nearly 46 percent of Arizonans do not support the move to shutdown the government, while 31 percent said they supported it.
KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Griselda Zetino and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
