David Clifford | Special to the Daily
Colorado Mountain College this week joined 165 other colleges across the U.S. urging the nation’s highest court to stand with its DACA students.
CMC is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to support more than 700,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. On Nov. 12, the high court will hear oral arguments in three consolidated cases challenging the end of the DACA program.
CMC officials have estimated that hundreds of DACA beneficiaries are among the college’s 20,000 students.
“DACA recipients are American in every way; they built their lives here and contribute to our state and region, our campuses and communities, and our local economies every day,” Colorado Mountain College President and CEO Carrie Hauser said in a press announcement. “Our college — which has been open and accessible to all students since its founding in 1965 — is proud to support DACA recipients. We believe in standing up for and protecting vulnerable populations when their futures are in question.”
About DACA
President Barack Obama’s executive order created the DACA program in June 2012. President Donald Trump has questioned whether Obama’s order constituted lawmaking by the executive branch, which Trump said would be illegal.
On Sept. 5, 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began phasing out the program, which gives a two-year deportation reprieve to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.
On Sept. 13, 2017 then-Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper ordered Colorado to join a multi-state lawsuit challenging Trump’s decision.
Dream, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, was first introduced in the U.S. Senate in 2001. Over the years, federal lawmakers have repeatedly failed to create a process by which undocumented immigrants, who came to the United States as children and meet certain other criteria, could become conditional residents and eventually permanent residents.
If DACA is rescinded, DACA recipients will no longer be able to work and study legally in the U.S, Hauser said.
“The Supreme Court should agree with what federal courts across the country have made clear: the administration’s decision to terminate DACA was unlawful and has caused irreparable damage to Dreamers and their families and loved ones, as well as to our higher education institutions,” Hauser said.