Skip to main content

Costa Statement on the Termination of DACA

September 5, 2017

FRESNO, CA – Today Congressman Jim Costa (CA-16) released the following statement after the Trump Administration terminated the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program:

"By terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, the Administration has taken a significant step backwards by threatening to force nearly 800,000 young immigrants from the country they call home. These DREAMers were brought to the United States as young children, and for them, America is their home. They are our neighbors – many of them are students – and they are contributing to our country. In the San Joaquin Valley, we have roughly 1,000 DREAMers attending Fresno State and approximately 600 attending UC Merced. Congress must pass legislation that provides our DREAMers protections similar to those under DACA before these protections are eliminated. I call on the House and Senate leadership to join me and others in a bipartisan effort to pass the BRIDGE Act, which will protect our DREAMers for the next three years.

"Yet, the BRIDGE Act is only a temporary measure, and is not a long-term solution. So passing this important legislation will not be enough. Our immigrants should not live in fear of being ripped away from their families and the country they love. Our businesses should not be slow to invest and hire because they are uncertain of their employee pool, and our farmers should not be forced to grow less food because of unstable labor sources. Yet these all occur because Congress has failed in the past to enact comprehensive immigration reform. This has led various presidents – Democratic and Republican presidents alike – to govern our immigration policy through piecemeal measures that often contradict each other. This is not good governance; it is irresponsible and indefensible, and it must end.

"As I have been saying for years, we must come together to fix our broken immigration system. This requires that we in Congress enact bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform that provides America with commonsense, just, and stable immigration policy, and that the President use his office to work with Congress to support this effort. Speaker Ryan has expressed hope that Congress will pass immigration reform to provide permanent legislative solutions. I urge him and my fellow members of Congress – from both sides of the aisle – to come together to protect our DREAMers and to pass the comprehensive immigration reform America so badly needs."

###

Issues:Immigration