The day Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was destined to die came and went with little real-world impact and lots of predictable political posturing and hand-wringing hyperbole.
Having used the uncertain futures of 700,000 DACA beneficiaries to shut down the government, Congressional Democrats now appear intent on further using them to ensure their political futures – and possibly retake a legislative majority.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) stated that President Trump’s “cruel, cowardly decision” to end the unconstitutional benefit to illegal aliens had left “America’s patriotic Dreamers” living “under a cloud of fear and uncertainty.”
She further demanded the Republican leadership “stop cravenly using the lives and future of these young patriots as bargaining chips,” and schedule a vote on the DREAM Act, a bill which is now farther from passage than it was when it was first introduced in 2001.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) echoed Pelosi’s shaming of Congressional Republicans, but kept his rhetorical powder dry for Trump, whom he claimed had created “a humanitarian crisis in this country” be reining in President Obama’s executive overreach and ending DACA.
In Wisconsin, the two Democrats seeking to upset House Speaker Paul Ryan – Randy Bryce and Cathy Myers – were both arrested on Monday at protests supporting illegal immigrants.
Photos of Bryce being handcuffed were widely circulated on Twitter and the Democratic activist group, ActBlue, attempted to use the DREAM Act rally as a fundraising tool.
In the Nation’s capital, one of two Democratic state representatives from Arizona was detained during a protest, while her colleagues managed to stay out of the police van.
Monica Sibri, founder of CUNY Dreamers, told NBC News the pressure on politicians for not embracing an amnesty agenda could be a potent political weapon.
“Anybody that opposes a piece of the Dream Act or any piece of immigrant legislation at the state level is now being labeled as a ‘Trumper,’” she added.
But the danger in bowing to political winds is that they shift quickly and they did just that late Monday when a federal judge ruled the administration was on sound legal ground in ending DACA.
In an instant, any impetus the administration or Republicans had to cede to dreamy demands blew away.