‘We are all immigrants’: Prayers at SC vigil after Trump announces end to DACA

Hundreds of people gathered Tuesday evening outside the State House to pray for a federal program whose end, announced Tuesday, could affect some 7,000 South Carolinians who came to the United States as children.

“My family didn’t come here to take anybody’s job,” Bianca Arizaga, a 20-year-old Midlands Technical College student who hopes to become a psychologist, told the crowd. “My family didn’t come here to ask for financial support from the government. My family came here to live this dream and ask you guys to help us live ours.”

Arizaga has lived in South Carolina since she was 3, when her parents brought her to the United States from Mexico. She is among some 7,000 South Carolina residents who could be affected by Tuesday’s announcement to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, possibly facing deportation.

“We cannot admit everyone who would like to come here,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Tuesday in announcing the Trump administration’s decision to end the program. “It’s just that simple.”

Then-President Barack Obama signed an executive order creating the program in 2012 to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the United States by their parents.

Calling the program illegal, the Trump administration said its termination would come after a six-month delay to give Congress time to pass a legislative fix that might allow nearly 1 million people here illegally to stay in the only country they have ever known.

Signs peppered Tuesday’s crowd with phrases like “We are all immigrants” and “They have a dream too.”

Many in attendance showed support and thanks for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is sponsoring the DREAM Act, a bi-partisan measure that would offer a pathway to citizenship for those receiving protection under DACA. Vigil attendees called on other South Carolina lawmakers to support the bill.

Tuesday’s vigil included prayers, some in Spanish, from different faith leaders. Rabbi Jonathan Case, of Columbia’s Beth Shalom Synagogue, said his grandfather came to the United States at 13 to escape the horrors of the Holocaust.

“God cannot be present as long as we exclude,” he said. “God cannot come in the door as long as the door is shut. God is an immigrant, just like the rest of us and just like all the people being excluded from the stream of America today.”

A similar event was planned for Tuesday evening outside Greenville’s Peace Center.

Trump told the Associated Press in April that young immigrants, often referred to as Dreamers, should “rest easy” and that his administration is “not after the Dreamers, we are after the criminals.”

South Carolina was one of 10 states, all of which voted for Trump in the 2016 election, that promised to sue the federal government over the program unless Trump ended it by Tuesday. S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson said Tuesday that Trump’s decision eliminates the need for legal action, calling the Obama-era program an “unconstitutional overreach.”

“It’s Congress’ job to pass laws, and President Trump’s action puts this decision back where it belongs,” Wilson said. “I would not challenge any legislation Congress passes, as long as it’s consistent with the Constitution.”

This story was originally published September 5, 2017 at 9:30 PM with the headline "‘We are all immigrants’: Prayers at SC vigil after Trump announces end to DACA."