Students support DACA, protest Trump's decision


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Wyandotte junior Tiffany Nguyen holds up a sign at a rally in support of DACA in front of Fabiano Botanical Garden on Central Michigan University's campus Oct. 11.

With linked arms and chants of “support not deport," students rallied to protest the Trump administration's plan to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arivals (DACA) program.

Around 20 people attended the rally that took place at noon Wednesday, Oct. 11 outside the Fabiano Botanical Gardens. Students from various registered student organizations spoke out against the decision including: Phenomenal Brown Girl, A Mile in our Shoes, Collective Action for Cultural Unity, Black Lives Matter CMU, the CMU chapter of the NAACP and the Empowered Latino Union.

This issue is important to everyone -- whether they know it or not -- said Detroit senior Jasmine Pope.

“These are people in your community. This affects everyone around you,” Pope said. She encouraged participants to get informed, call their local senators and share information with others.

DACA is a program which protects certain young, undocumented immigrants from deportation. The policy was enacted in 2012 under the Obama administration. In September, President Donald Trump announced an end to the program and has given Congress six months to come up with a legislative alternative.

Staying quiet is the worst thing people can do, Pope said, and people need to realize that others in their own communities are afraid they might be removed from their homes and forced out of their country. 

Tiffany Nguyen, president of the Asian Cultural Organization, said she wishes students were more informed about how many people are affected by revoking DACA and how devastating it will be for them.

“It’s like saying that they’re allowed to be here and then all of a sudden stripping that away without their say in it,” the Wyandotte junior said. 

This program has been in place for over five years and it's given people time to establish a home and a life in America, Nguyen said, and suddenly taking it all away isn’t right.

She said she has been wanting to collaborate on something with other organizations for a while and this gave her the perfect opportunity. Nguyen said that this issue has a personal connection with her because her parents came to the U.S. during the Vietnam War, fleeing for their lives to find safety.  

Both Nguyen and Pope encouraged students to sign a petition, found at unitedwestand.org, to stop deportations and reverse Trump's decision. 

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