DC Students Stage Walkouts In Support Of DACA

WASHINGTON, DC — Hundreds of students from nine schools throughout the District staged walkouts in support of DACA Thursday, according to multiple media reports and accounts of students on social media.

Students participating in Operation #CleanDreamAct are urging President Donald Trump to pass the Dream Act in the House before the 2017 Congressional session ends Dec. 15. They walked out of school and work and gathered at the Hart Senate Office Building.

Participating D.C. schools include Woodrow Wilson High School, School Without Walls of Washington, D.C., George Washington University, Trinity University, Georgetown University and Montgomery College-Rockville Campus and Takoma Park Campus.

"Immigrant youth are walking out of their schools and workplaces and descending on the Capitol to resist Trump's attacks on immigrants and to demand a clean #DreamAct," the National Immigration Law Center said.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Republican Congressional leaders are not planning to include protection for DACA recipients in the year-end spending bill.

“It’s been a year (since Trump was elected) and what has he done? He said he had the heart for DREAMers, then he rescinded DACA," DREAMer Bruna Distinto, a senior at Trinity Washington University, told NBC News. "We want to call attention to Congress that something needs to get done, that a DREAM Act needs to pass and not wait until next year."

In September, Trump rescinded the Obama-era policy that protected about 800,000 undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as minors. The administration stopped accepting new applications for DACA and once recipients' registrations expire outside the six-month window, they will not be able to reapply.

This means, in part, that the hundreds of thousands of people who received work permits under the program will be forced to leave their jobs once their registrations expire.

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Photo by Matt York/Associated Press