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On its 12th anniversary, DACA is on the ropes as election looms
Monarch butterflies, passionate activists, and “we’re here to stay” signs have all become emblematic of marches and protests calling on presidential administrations to defend DACA recipients from deportation during the past 12 years.
Saturday marks the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which was established by the Obama administration in 2012.
“I never felt so powerful. I never felt so humbled. I never felt so happy,” said Greisa Martinez Rosas, director of United We Dream as she recalls receiving news on DACA’s announcement in 2012.
As a 7-year-old child, Rosas crossed the Rio Grande River in the U.S.-Mexico border along with her parents. She lived as an undocumented immigrant in Texas and later went on to work as a community organizer, gathering support to call on the Obama administration to protect Dreamers.
After DACA was rolled out, however, Rosas said she waited about a year out of fear to apply. By giving her personal information, she believed immigration officials would deport her undocumented mother.
“I remember getting the work permit in my hand,” Rosas said. “It was a bit anticlimactic, because it’s just a piece of paper. It’s a piece of plastic and it was the same feeling when I got my social security number. It’s just numbers on a piece of paper but then they mean so much.”
Rosas’ work permit allowed her to leave her job selling cars to become a fulltime advocate with nonprofit immigrant advocacy group United We Dream.
It’s a job she still holds 12 years later, calling on legal protections for DACA recipients as the program was declared unlawful in 2021, and its future remains uncertain amid an ongoing legal fight.
Like Rosas, Astrid Silva, a Dreamer with immigrant advocacy group Dream Big Nevada, became a face to the DACA movement as a community organizer beginning 2009 — working closely with elected officials to advocate for the needs of those who were brought into the U.S. as children.
“I can still remember to this day the excitement, and it was all this optimism of what will come with this,” Silva recalls the day DACA was announced.
Silva was 4 years old when she crossed the U.S-Mexico border illegally with her parents, and can recall from a very young age that she didn’t share her classmates’ privileges.
“I remember I dreaded my 18th birthday so much,” Silva said, recalling that she was not able to obtain an official government ID or license like most of her friends.
Now, Silva reminds those so-called “Dreamers” to not take their status for granted.
“My ask is that we not give up on it, that we not settle for a two-year temporary,” Silva says. “We need to get the permanent fix.”
Rosas and Silva are only two out of the over 500,000 people actively benefiting from the DACA policy today. They help to make up the handful of Dreamers who have organized their communities for over 12 years, delivering their pleas to Washington lawmakers.
“No matter what the outcome of the election is, I’m here to stay,” Rosas said. “This is my home, and I have to keep fighting.”
With immigration among the top issues for voters heading into the November election, both Republicans and Democrats are campaigning with their proposed policies regarding undocumented immigrants and the future of DACA.
President Biden last week issued an executive order restricting asylum claims for undocumented immigrants along the southern border. Sources also told CBS News Friday that the Biden administration is preparing an immigration relief program that would offer work permits and deportation protections to unauthorized immigrants married to U.S. citizens, as long as they have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years.
Those sources said the Biden administration is also preparing a second plan that would streamline the process for Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants to request waivers that would make it easier for them to obtain temporary visas, such as H-1B visas for high-skilled workers.
Ahead of DACA’s 12th anniversary, the Biden-Harris campaign released a Spanglish ad titled “Here to Stay” across battleground states. It includes a compilation of Dreamers contrasting Mr. Biden’s immigration record with that of former President Donald Trump.
The campaign also published a second ad Friday titled “Standing with Dreamers,” in which Vice President Kamala Harris underscores her commitment to protecting Dreamers, while condemning Trump’s immigration policies.
“The former president when it comes to immigration, man, his policies are cruel and ineffective,” Harris claims.
In 2017, when Trump announced the termination of DACA, he issued a statement saying he does “not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents. But we must also recognize that we are a nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.”
At the time, Trump said he looked forward to working with Congress to address immigration issues. Now, as part of his reelection campaign, Trump has promised to begin mass deportations upon taking office.
“We will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in the history of our country,” Trump told his crowd on June 6 during a Turning Point Action town hall in Arizona.
Proposals for mass deportation currently have bipartisan support among registered voters, according to the latest CBS News poll. A nearly six in 10 majority of voters say they would favor, in principle, a new government program to deport all undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. A similarly sized majority would have local law enforcement try to identify those living in the U.S. illegally.
— Camilo Montoya-Galvez and Anthonly Salvanto contributed to this report.
Washington — Attorneys for Sen. Bob Menendez concluded calling witnesses on Wednesday, opting not to have the New Jersey Democrat take the stand in his own defense as he fights allegations that he traded political favors for gold bars and cash.
A handful of witnesses testified on his behalf, compared to the 30 witnesses called by the prosecution during the trial, which has so far spanned eight weeks.
Menendez’s defense attorneys called his sister and the sister of his wife, Nadine Menendez, to testify on Monday as they sought to show it was not unusual for the couple to keep gold and large amounts of cash in their home.
When federal investigators executed a search warrant at Menendez’s home in June 2022, they found more than $480,000 in cash stashed in envelopes, coats, shoes and bags, as well as 13 gold bars worth more than $100,000.
Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty, is charged with bribery, extortion, wire fraud, obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent for Egypt. Nadine Menendez has also pleaded not guilty. Her trial was postponed until August as she recovers from breast cancer surgery.
The senator’s older sister, Caridad Gonzalez, told jurors that their parents and aunt had a practice of storing cash at home after their family fled persecution in Cuba in 1951, before Menendez was born. She called the habit “a Cuban thing.”
“Daddy always said don’t trust the banks,” Gonzalez said. “If you trust the banks, you never know what can happen, so you must always have money at home.”
Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
She recalled finding a stash of cash in a shoebox in Menendez’s home in the 1980s.
But prosecutors undercut one of the points made by Gonzalez after she testified that she asked her brother to help a neighbor with an immigration issue. Prosecutors showed text messages between the senator and his sister that suggest he did not give that issue the same treatment that prosecutors say the businessmen who bribed the couple got.
The businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, are on trial with the senator. They have also pleaded not guilty.
When they asked Menendez for help, he allegedly pressured a U.S. Department of Agriculture official to protect Hana’s halal certification monopoly and interfered in a criminal case in New Jersey involving Daibes, according to prosecutors.
Russell Richardson, a forensic accountant, testified that Menendez withdrew about $400 in cash almost every few weeks from 2008 to 2022, totaling more than $150,000.
The testimony was meant to bolster Menendez’s explanation that he withdrew thousands of dollars in cash from his bank account over decades because of his family’s experience in Cuba.
Richardson testified during cross-examination that he did not find any record of Menendez withdrawing $10,000 in cash at one time. Some of the cash seized from Menendez’s home was found in bundles of $10,000, and Daibes’ fingerprints were found on some of the envelopes containing the cash.
Part of Menendez’s defense strategy has been to pin the blame on his wife, claiming the senator was unaware of his wife’s financial challenges and her dealings with the businessmen accused of bribing them.
Nadine Menendez’s younger sister, Katia Tabourian, testified that her sister and the senator broke up in late 2018 because her sister’s ex-boyfriend “was creating a lot of chaos in her relationship with the senator.” Menendez’s lawyers say the couple could not have plotted together during the pause in their relationship.
Tabourian confirmed that her sister locked her bedroom closet, which Menendez’s lawyers said he did not have a key to. Investigators found gold bars and cash in the closet during the 2022 search. Tabourian said it was common for her family to give cash, gold and jewelry as gifts.
Jurors are expected to have the case by the end of next week, following testimony from Hana’s witnesses and closing arguments. Daibes’ legal team rested Wednesday without presenting a defense.
—Ash Kalmar contributed reporting.
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Avian flu confirmed in a Colorado farmworker, marking fourth human case in U.S. since March
A case of H5 influenza, also known as bird flu or avian influenza, has been confirmed in a man who was working at a dairy farm in northeastern Colorado. That’s according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which said it is the fourth confirmed human case in the United States since an outbreak among cows that appears to have started in March.
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The man was working in Northern Colorado and had direct contact with cattle that were infected with avian flu. To this point, the only U.S. cases have been among farmworkers.
The CDPHE says the person who tested positive for the avian flu only had one symptom — pink eye, otherwise known as conjunctivitis. He was tested after reporting his symptoms and received an antiviral treatment with oseltamivir afterwards. Those are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended steps when there’s a confirmed human case. The man, whose identity is not being released, has recovered.
This is the first confirmed a case of avian flu in Colorado since 2022. CDPHE state epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy said the risk to the public is low.
“Avian flu viruses are currently spreading among animals, but they are not adapted to spread from person to person. Right now, the most important thing to know is that people who have regular exposure to infected animals are at increased risk of infection and should take precautions when they have contact with sick animals,” Herlihy said in a prepared statement.
Jill Hunsaker Ryan, the executive director of the CDPHE said “Coloradans should feel confident that the state is doing everything possible to mitigate the virus.” The guidance for farmworkers includes the recommendation that people shouldn’t touch animals who are sick or who have died. For people who must handle such animals, the following is recommended:
– Wear personal protective equipment that includes an N95 respirator as well as eye protection and gloves.
– Wash hands with soap and water afterward. An alcohol-based hand rub could also be used if soap and water is not available.
“We can make these recommendations, but I think all of us realize that this may be a bit challenging for workers to comply with that,” the CDC’s Tim Uyeki said at a briefing with rural doctors last month.
It is unclear whether the man was wearing personal protective equipment.
“Our partnership with the Colorado Department of Agriculture has been crucial in disseminating information to dairy farmers across the state,” Hunsaker Ryan said.
The three other confirmed human cases of avian flu since the March outbreak in cattle were found in Texas and Michigan.
Anyone who has been working with dairy cows and begins to feel sick with possible avian flu symptoms should call the CDPHE at 303-692-2700 during the day or 303-370-9395 after hours.
More information about avian flu can be found on the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s website.
News of the case comes as federal officials are now debating whether and when to deploy 4.8 million doses of bird flu vaccine that are being filled into vials this summer. Finland announced last month it would offer shots to workers who might be exposed to the virus.
Vaccinating farm workers?
U.S. officials say manufacturing of the vaccines is expected to be done by August.
Vaccinemaker CSL Seqirus says it is still in talks with the Food and Drug Administration to clear use of their shots in humans. After that, it would be up to the CDC to decide whether to roll out the shots for farm workers.
“No final decisions are made, but we are in the process of robust discussion,” the CDC’s Principal Deputy Director Dr. Nirav Shah told reporters on Tuesday.
Shah said the vaccine debate hinges in part on whether more distribution of flu treatments might be a better alternative.
“If our goal is to reduce the number of infections that may occur, we have to wonder whether vaccination is the best route for that, or whether there may be other routes that are faster or even more effective such as, as I mentioned, more widespread use of antivirals,” said Shah.
Officials are also discussing other measures to help workers infected with the virus, Shah added, including the possibility of offering financial help with sick leave and further outreach.
Farm workers may also not be willing to get the shots, even if they were to become eligible for vaccination.
“If right now, H5 is not perceived as a pressing threat among farm workers, and I’m not speculating as to whether it is or not, but if that is the case, then uptake may not be robust,” said Shah.
