On Friday, youth across the country are expected to participate in school walkouts to send a message to the Supreme Court that they support Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an immigration policy the justices will hear oral arguments on next week.
In Washington, DC, youth from the DMV area will meet at Union Station, Capitol South Metro Station and Judiciary Square to begin trekking to the Supreme Court Building, where they will end their walkout with a rally. Across the country, students in California, Illinois, Arizona and Oklahoma will be hosting similar demonstrations.
“The students, made up of DACA recipients, undocumented students and U.S. citizen allies, will highlight that their home is here and they are here to stay,” reads a press advisory from United We Dream, a national immigrant youth-led network and one of the organizers of the student walkouts.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the lawfulness of President Donald Trump’s termination of the Obama-era program. Since 2012, DACA has provided temporary protection from deportation in addition to eligibility for work permits to more than 800,000 undocumented people. In 2017, the Trump administration rescinded the program, saying it was established “without proper statutory authority.” As such, Trump ordered his administration to stop renewing the temporary work permits for those in the DACA program. His order, however, was blocked by several courts — with three cases headed to the high court.
“They [will] hear arguments regarding Trump’s unlawful termination of DACA and decide to either uphold the three separate rulings of the lower courts or give the president a greenlight for a new wave of family separation, stripping over 700,000 DACA recipients of work authorization and adding them to the list of residents already being targeted for deportation,” José Alonso Muñoz of United We Dream said in a statement.
The day of the oral arguments, the organization will be rallying outside the Supreme Court alongside the Home is Here Coalition and other immigrant rights activists.
A decision isn’t expected to be made until the first half of 2020.