Federal judge reinstates DACA, Texas Tech dreamers speak out

LUBBOCK, Texas — After five months of the Trump Administration suspending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a federal judge has reinstated it — protecting over 600,000 young immigrants from deportation. On Tuesday, DACA recipients from Texas Tech spoke on how they’re feeling about this decision.

“We always, we know, it’s gonna be a long fight,” said former DACA recipient Saba Nafees. “And it has been, it shouldn’t be a fight, it should just be common sense. But unfortunately, it’s not.”

DACA, short for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is an Obama-era program that protects its recipients, or Dreamers, from deportation. DACA provides a two-year work permit that recipients have to apply for and pay hundreds of dollars to renew. 

“None of this is over yet. We still have a lot more to go. We have to legislate and get a solution out,” said Nafees. “As everybody on both sides of the aisle likes to say is we really did get a legislative solution to this problem. So, we hope that we can do that sometime very soon.”

Read the full article on everythinglubbock.com, published December 8, 2020.