Trump embraces white supremacists' demands to sink the Dream Act

On Jan. 8, Trump administration officials announced they would be ending temporary protected status protections for some 200,000 Salvadoran families.

This came days after President Donald Trump declared he would sign no bill to protect DACA recipients unless Congress provides $33 billion for a border wall and 10,000 more ICE agents, rejects more asylum-seekers, cuts funding to sanctuary cities, and ends family-based immigration and the diversity visa lottery.

These measures would severely limit legal immigration from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Trump’s decision means that an additional 200,000 refugee families are now targets for deportation.

At the same time, Trump is putting forward demands to exchange the Dream Act for policies that would return us to the old white supremacist, Jim Crow system of immigration laws that existed prior to the immigration reforms won by the civil rights movement in 1965.

More than 83 percent of the public support Dreamers being allowed to stay in the United States.

This is a hugely popular program that should be passed immediately by Democrats and Republicans and signed by the president before Jan. 19.

There is no need to compromise, but passage will require pressure from people of all backgrounds to make sure that immigrant youth are not sucked into the mass deportation machine that Trump and his white nationalist supporters are trying to carry out.

Voces de la Frontera and our student arm Youth Empowered in the Struggle are organizing in the weeks leading up to Jan. 19 to make sure that Democrats and Republicans stand strong in ensuring that a clean Dream Act is included in any spending bill.