The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns signed onto an amicus brief for the U.S. Supreme Court Case challenging the Trump Administration's recission of DACA, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. This program allows those who were brought to the United States without legal documents before the age of 16 to study and work in the United States and delay their deportation. Beginning on November 12, 2019, the Supreme Court will decide whether the way in which President Trump terminated the program was unlawful.
Read the entire amicus brief here, signed by 127 religious organizations.
The text of Maryknoll's statement within the amicus brief is as follows:
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns is the justice and peace advocacy office representing Maryknoll Missioners – Catholic priests, brothers, sisters and lay missioners -- who work with the poor and marginalized in 40 countries around the world. From their headquarters in Ossining, NY, Maryknoll Missioners have lived and worked with families inextreme poverty for many years in countries where DACA recipients originate. Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, Sisters, and Lay Missioners have acquireda deep understanding of the dire social, economic and
environmental conditions that Dreamers would face if they were deported, as well as intimate witness to the fragility and insecurity of living in the shadows without documents in the US. Deporting Dreamers to their countries of origin, where most have only weak or distant ties, would subject them to the same forces of poverty, violence, and instability their families originally fled and from which millions more still flee. For these reasons we oppose the termination of DACA and seek a resolution ofDreamers’ status that allows them a path to citizenship.
