Hundreds of illegal and legal immigrants descended upon the Hart Senate building Thursday afternoon, gathering in mass protest of the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood ArrivalsAct.
The protesters gathered in the Capitol to demand that members of Congress pass legislation for DREAMERers and DACA recipients.
Protests were not relegated to solely Washington, college students across the U.S. staged organized walkouts and rallys Thursday.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Another group, the UndocuBlack Network, joined in on Thursday’s Capitol protests. UndocuBlack describes themselves as a “multigenerational Network of Black undocumented people organizing our communities and building power.”
House Republicans said Thursday that they are hoping to pass a bill help DACA recipients before the clock runs out on 2017. Roughly a dozen House GOP members think as many as 300 of the chamber’s 435 members could get behind such a bill.
Happening Now! UndocuBlack joins hundreds of immigrant youth and we are taking over the Hart Senate building in Washington, DC #DREAMActNow@speakerryan #CleanDreamAct #CleanDreamActNOW pic.twitter.com/lLXPJro17v
— UndocuBlack Network (@UndocuBlack) November 9, 2017
“No bill is going to be perfect, but inaction is just unacceptable. We stand here ready to work with the speaker’s working group, with the White House, with our friends from both sides of the aisle to pass a legislative solution this year,” Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington told reporters Thursday. “Every time that Congress kicks this can down the road, people, real people, are hurt.”
The House is not the only chamber floating a solution to the quickly expiring DACA program. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois have put forth a bipartisan DACA relief bill.
This report, by Robert Donachie, was cross-posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation.