NEW YORK -- Activists in dozens of cities across the country staged rallies on Friday to press for deportation relief, one year after President Barack Obama announced far-reaching immigration reform programs that have been blocked by a lawsuit.
Obama announced an executive action last Nov. 20 that would have allowed an estimated 4.4 million undocumented immigrants to obtain a renewable, temporary relief from deportation and the ability to work legally. But 26 mostly Republican-led states challenged the program and kept it from moving forward. The Department of Justice filed an appeal on Friday asking the Supreme Court to let the program move forward.
In New York, dozens of activists gathered at the steps of City Hall and called on the Supreme Court to take up the case and decide on it before June, when this term ends.
Pamela Chomba, an activist with FWD.us, a pro-immigration reform group founded by tech industry leaders, told the crowd she had secured deportation relief under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Obama implemented in 2012. That program temporarily exempts people who arrived in the U.S. as children from deportation.
But Chomba’s parents could still be expelled, even though she says they qualify for the most expansive of the executive actions Obama announced last year: the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program, which shields the undocumented parents of U.S. citizens from deportation.
“My family came from Peru when I was a child,” Chomba said. “While I’m able to stay in the U.S. thanks to the DACA program, I fear for my parents.”
Some 5.3 million U.S. citizens have at least one undocumented parent who might qualify for DAPA if the courts allowed the program to operate, according to a study the Center for American Progress released Thursday. Roughly 1.6 million U.S. citizens who live in a household with someone who might qualify for DAPA will be eligible to vote next year, the study says.
Latino Democratic politicians also urged the Supreme Court to not push a decision on the program to next year's term.
“This is going to be a big issue in 2016,” Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) told The Huffington Post. “I don’t think the Supreme Court can avoid this issue. It’s a day of reckoning for them.”
Continuing to hold up DAPA hobbles the national economy because it keeps people from working on the books and wastes the time of law enforcement officials, Becerra added.
“We know there are 11 million people living in the shadows,” Becerra said. “The worst thing you could have is people being in the shadows for the wrong reasons. DAPA would make things easier on law enforcement.”
Republicans largely oppose the executive actions. Even GOP presidential candidates Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who have supported extending legal status to undocumented immigrants, view the DAPA program as an unconstitutional circumvention of Congress.
While many Republican politicians hope to block Obama's programs, many immigrant rights activists say the executive actions didn't go far enough. At demonstrations in several cities throughout the week, they continued to pressure the Obama administration to unilaterally soften the deportation system in the face of congressional inaction.
The #Not1More campaign, which is made up of a nationwide network of immigrant rights groups, contends that the Obama administration could apply prosecutorial discretion more widely, stop recruiting local authorities to help enforce federal immigration law and end “Operation Streamline” -- a program that rapidly convicts dozens of migrants at a time caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. Those convicted under Operation Streamline serve jail sentences before U.S. authorities deport them.
“We can’t wait for another year before a court decision comes for a program that only included half the people who need relief,” Marisa Franco, director of the #Not1More campaign, said in a statement. “Not while the administration has such clear options and [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is clearly continuing to violate people’s rights.”
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