Three members of Congress got arrested at the Trump Tower protest Tuesday: Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Raul Grijalva (D-AZ). Melissa Mark-Viverito, the Democratic speaker of New York’s City Council, also got taken into custody for protesting the end of DACA.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program protects nearly 800,000 young undocumented people from deportation. A fortnight ago, Donald Trump announced he would end DACA if Congress did not find a permanent solution within a six-month timeframe.
There were ten arrests in total at the Trump Tower, but protestors confessed that they had planned to get arrested. This protest is the second one in front of the president’s building in New York, with the first being September 5th and prompting 34 arrests that time.
This Tuesday’s protest blocked traffic on Fifth Avenue for some time, which was the reason for the New York Police Department to intervene. The NYPD later confirmed the ten arrests, with the four Latino politicians among the list of names.
For Grijalva, this marks the second arrest for supporting immigrants, the first being in 2013 at a march in the capital. Over 200 arrests occurred that day in Washington D.C., but police intervention is never enough to make passionate protestors quit their cause.
Grijalva, like many other Americans, is often criticizing Trump and his political agenda. On one recent occasion, Grijalva urged Congress to replace the POTUS by making use of the 25th amendment, which states the procedure of replacing the president or vice-president in the case of a resignation, incapacitation, removal, or death.
Congressman Gutierrez said these peaceful protests are to show Trump’s cabinet and members of both parties that these pacifist events will not cease until Congress acts on behalf of the DREAMers. The fight for the DREAM Act is ongoing since 2001, without much success, unfortunately.
Both the House of Representatives and the Senate have approved this piece of legislation, but never at the same time. Congress has until March of 2018 to agree on this measure, or introduce a new one that would help keep these young immigrants in the country.
If they do not act swiftly and efficiently, an era of mass deportation will haunt the United States for years to come. Not only will these 800,000 lives be at stake, but all 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country would have no other choice but to leave their homes or be split up from their families.