Speech #CREC-2017-07-19-pt1-PgH5981-4_t1

GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, it looks almost certain that the Trump administration is going to take about 1.2 million immigrants who currently have documents issued by the U.S. Government and turn them into undocumented immigrants. They have work permits and pay their full share of taxes. They are covered by U.S. labor laws and are not undercutting the wages, well-being, and livelihood of native-born American workers. For all intents and purposes, they are documented workers in the U.S., and many have been here for more than two decades. Nevertheless, the more than 400,000 with temporary protected status, or TPS, and 800,000 with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, could be made undocumented in the coming weeks and in the month of September. Then, once they are categorized as undocumented, President Trump will unleash ICE and Homeland Security to go after them so they can be deported. There are 800,000 young people who went through a thorough background check and have been complying with the rules of the DACA program for almost 5 years. They were brought here as children and grew up in the United States, went to our schools, played sports with our kids, and they speak English probably as well as you and I. They came forward, as they were told to, and we actually reduced the population of undocumented immigrants, got people on the books, and were able to redeploy our resources elsewhere. Now it appears that the leaders in the Republican Party who do not like the idea of so many immigrants having legal status are giving the President an ultimatum: deport the DREAMers, or we will sue. The Governor of Texas, who is leading the charge, has a very sympathetic judge, and it is up to Jeff Sessions to put up a fight, when he himself has been trying to kill legal status for immigrants for years. So, practically speaking, between ending DACA and ending TPS, we are going to dump about 1.2 million people into the pool of 10 million to 11 million people who are living and working here under the radar, outside of legal protections, and without any way to become legal. So this Saturday, in Chicago, at 2 p.m., at Lincoln United Methodist Church on Damen, we are going to get together and organize ourselves to fight back. Yes, there will be legislation from Democrats and even Republicans to fight back. There will be court cases to fight back, even if the Attorney General does nothing, which we fully expect him to do. But fighting for DACA and fighting to keep millions of people in this country who have put down roots and built lives here is going to be a people's fight, and the effort to find ways to protect families and to cope with more than a million people being pushed into the black market requires us to organize in every community across the Nation. It is up to us to teach each other how we will resist this latest insult in our congregations, churches, universities, cities, and neighborhoods throughout the Nation. Immigrants or people who have DACA or TPS cannot do this on their own, but they need to be part of a coalition that fights back. Teachers who work with kids every day and bear witness to the fears students face every day about their parents and families can't do this alone. They need to be part of a coalition that comes together to resist. Employers will face a choice: whether they are just going to roll over while employees are ruled ineligible and work documents are terminated, or to stand with us and stand with their workers and fight for them. So, if you marched with your pink hat at the Women's March, I am asking you now, on behalf of immigrants and the very future of immigration, to stand with us. If you marched for science or the environment, if you have joined us in protesting bathroom laws and discrimination in all its forms, your brothers and sisters need you now. At airports across the country, you stood up for refugees and said no to Trump's Muslim ban. We need you. Black Lives Matter, we need you, and, frankly, we need each other.