Another tweet from President Trump is renewing fears that the young, undocumented immigrants known as “dreamers” will not be allowed to stay in the country.
President Donald Trump called on Congress Monday to pass new border legislation using the "Nuclear Option if necessary" to get it through Senate.
This new call to action by the President has some immigrants who are in the country through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, concerned that they may be deported.
Paola Maldonado is a "dreamer" at UMass Boston, who came to the U.S. from El Salvador when she was just nine years old.
"I know I’m from there and I love my roots but that’s also a place that I don’t really know," said Maldonado.
So when she saw President Trump‘s Easter morning tweet that read "No more DACA deal," it felt like another downward spiral on a roller coaster of a year.
When asked today if Dreamers should be worried Trump said, "Now people are taking advantage of DACA and that's a shame. It should have never happened."
Dreamers say Trump has gone from supporting them, to using them.
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Elias Rosenfeld is a Dreamer at Brandeis currently in Washington, DC to organize and advocate for DACA.
"It's sort of sprung a new sense of chaos to all 800,000 DACA recipients. There’s this very loud, loud minority who are screaming in the President's ears to really take on these immigration policies that only 20 percent of the country truly supports," said Rosenfeld.
Professor Kari Hong, an immigration expert at Boston College Law School says dreamers should keep an eye on the court case that has DACA on hold for two years. "People are temporarily safe and it’s a question of how long will they be safe," said Hong.
Hong says Trump is being disingenuous because he never wanted DACA.
"He ended DACA and any bargaining chip that he had with DACA involved was always to get his wall."
So the fear and frustration continues for dreamers but many say there is still hope that their voices will soon be heard in a new and friendlier Congress.
