President Biden invited a group of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients in the Oval Office Friday amid a push for immigration reform in Washington.
Biden, facing a mounting migrant crisis at the southern border, is working to extend the DACA program, an Obama-era effort to protect people who were brought to the U.S. as children, which came under fire during the Trump administration.
Six DACA recipients, sometimes called “Dreamers,” were invited to the White House meeting.
Maria Praeli, a self-described “undocumented American,” was among those invited. She shared numerous photos from the trip to Twitter throughout the day under the hashtag, “#WeAreHome,” including one taken just outside of the West Wing.
Another guest, Astou Thiane, reportedly arrived in the U.S. from Senegal when she was 7 but didn’t know she was an illegal immigrant until she applied for college.
Rep. Sara Jacobs, a California Democrat, used the occasion to call on the Senate to pass the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act, which would create a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients.
That request, however, doesn’t appear likely anytime soon. Immigration bill negotiations led by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, have barely budged following weeks of talks.
And the Biden administration’s border point-person, Vice President Kamala Harris, is facing mounting criticism over her handling of the migrant issue.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich called on the president to put someone else in that position earlier this week following what he called her “abysmal” response to the rising number of arrivals.
And Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, tore into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during a hearing Thursday, grilling him over the administration’s border response as Border Patrol encounters have skyrocketed.
Mayorkas, for his part, said earlier this year that DHS was working to “preserve and fortify” the DACA program.
*story by Fox News
