Punishing Dreamers for the Sins of the Fathers (and Mothers)

• Date: 01 April 2018
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Author: Solangel Maldonado
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12347

PUNISHING DREAMERS FOR THE SINS OF THE FATHERS

(AND MOTHERS)

Solangel Maldonado

It has been more than forty years since the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the state may not

penalize a child for the wrongful acts of a parent. In a series of cases striking laws that discriminated

against children based on their status as “illegitimate,” the Court reasoned that “imposing disabilities

on the illegitimate child is contrary to the basic concept of our system that legal burdens should bear

some relationship to individual responsibility or wrongdoing.”

1

The Court recognized that “children

can affect neither their parents’ conduct nor their own status.”

2

Yet, by rescinding the protections

granted by the Obama administration to individuals brought by their parents to the United States ille-

gally as children, the Trump administration has ensured that, absent immediate action by Congress,

“the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.”

3

In 2012, after Congress failed once again to pass the Development, Relief, and Education for

Alien Minors (DREAM) Act that would have provided a path to legal status to individuals who

entered the United States illegally as children and who are enrolled in college or have joined the mili-

tary,

4

President Barack Obama signed the executive order called Deferred Action for Childhood

Arrivals (DACA).

5

DACA grants reprieve from deportation for a renewable two-year period to per-

sons who entered the United States before their sixteenth birthday and have lived here since at least

2007.

6

It allows DACA recipients, many of whom were so young when they arrived in the United

States that they have no memory of their country of origin, to obtain driver’s licenses, attend school,

and obtain employment authorization.

7

More than 800,000 young people have been granted deferred

action under DACA, but on September 5, 2017, President Trump took these protections away.

8

Unless Congress acts to protect DACA recipients, beginning on March 5, 2018, as many as 983

DACA recipients each day will lose their protection from deportation.

9

Families will be separated

and torn apart as young persons are deported to countries many have never known. Although the

Trump administration has indicated that deportation of DREAMers who have broken no laws is not

a priority, without protection from deportation, DREAMers will lose the ability to further their edu-

cation and work legally. In short, they will be denied the opportunities to pursue the American

dream. They will also return to a pre-DACA era in which they must live in fear that any interaction

with a government official could trigger deportation proceedings.

Americans hold widely divergent views on immigration and, specifically, whether the government

should offer a path to legal status to persons who entered the United States illegally. The parents of

DACA recipients entered the United States illegally for reasons that some, possibly many, Americans

would find compelling. Other Americans, however, would conclude that dire or even unbearable

conditions in the country of origin do not justify breaking the law. Yet, despite the different opinions,

it is undisputable that individuals who came to the United States as children, without volition and

often without knowledge or understanding (given their young age) that they were entering the coun-

try illegally, are here through no fault of their own. Children do not choose where they go or live and

thus DREAMers are not lawbreakers. They committed no crime when they entered the United States.

If we truly believe, as the U.S. Supreme Court has held, that children should not be penalized for the

acts of their parents, it is difficult to justify the withdrawal of the protections extended under DACA

Correspondence: solangel.maldonado@shu.edu

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 56 No. 2, April 2018 353–354

V

C2018 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts