Resource: A Case That Could Determine the Future for Dreamers

On the morning of February 10th, Daniel Ramirez was sleeping on a couch in his father’s apartment in Des Moines, Washington, when three agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) walked through the front door. The agents had just arrested his father, who is undocumented, in the parking lot outside, and when they learned that Daniel and his older brother, Josue, were in the apartment they decided to investigate. An agent asked Daniel for his name, date of birth, and birthplace. He is twenty-four and was born in Mexico, but he grew up in California. Since 2014, he has been registered with the federal government under a policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era measure that establishes “lawful presence” for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. The program allows beneficiaries—some eight hundred thousand people nationwide, often referred to as Dreamers—to work legally, while also freeing them from the immediate threat of deportation. “I have a work permit. You cannot take me,” Daniel told the agent before he was handcuffed. Daniel has been in federal detention since his arrest, and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has refused to release him.