Outside Supreme Court immigration arguments, voices for families

As the Supreme Court on Monday weighed the legality of two executive orders on immigration, Sayra Hernandez, a 16-year-old from Mexico, stood outside the courthouse with her sister and mother. The family has a deportation date scheduled for April 29.

“For me and my family, it means a lot,” Hernandez, who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said of the court’s ability to uphold or tear down Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA. DAPA provides three-year work permits and safety from deportation to the parents of children who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

(The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA, program applies to children brought to the U.S. illegally and is not affected by this case except for the administration’s proposal to extend the work permit for so-called Dreamers to three years from two.)

Those Obama administration executive orders have been on ice for more than a year due to legal troubles, as Texas and 25 other states filed lawsuits against them.

For the hundreds of activists and protesters who joined Hernandez and her family Monday outside the courthouse – the majority of whom were against the Texas lawsuit – the oral arguments of Texas v. U.S. served as an opportunity to have their voices heard. “Si, se puede,” which translates roughly to “Yes, we can,” was a consistent chant heard throughout the crowds.

“I’m here because I don’t want to be scared anymore that when I go home my mom isn’t going to be there,” said Kerry Gutierrez, a 17-year-old from Boulder, Colorado, whose mother is in the U.S. illegally. “I don’t want to be the head of household; I’m too young for that.”

“I know what it’s like to live in fear of being deported, of being separated from my family,” said Julissa Arce, who came to the United States illegally when she was 11. Now Arce, a former protégé at Goldman Sachs, sits on the board of the National Immigration Law Center, an organization that provides legal aid to low-income immigrants.

“At the end of the day my story is one about perseverance and determination, and that is the American story, and that’s what we want for the millions of people affected by this issue,” Arce added.

For others, however, the authorization of DAPA and the DACA extensions would set a dangerous precedent for the powers of the commander in chief.

“At its core, it’s not about whether you are anti- or pro-immigration, it’s about whether the Supreme Court will allow the executive branch,” to skirt the rule of law, U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho, a Republican from Florida, said in a statement after the argument.

“It’s ironic that people would come into this country illegally, and the reason they’re coming illegally is because this country provides more opportunity than the places they came from,” said U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican from Texas. “And yet, once here, they want us to be like the country they came from, where we don’t enforce the law across the board.”

There are more than 11 million immigrants in the U.S. who are here illegally, with 3.6 million of them possibly eligible for DAPA benefits, according to a 2016 report from the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based nonpartisan research center.

“If you really dig deep down into this case and try to understand this, this is not (about) amnesty or some kind of blanket forgiveness,” said Wendy Feliz, communications director for the American Immigration Council, an organization that advocates for immigration policy and education. “This is temporary protected status for people.”

This story was originally published April 18, 2016 at 5:40 PM with the headline "Outside Supreme Court immigration arguments, voices for families."