Nightmares of whiteness: Dreams and deportability in the age of Trump

On September 5th, 2017, the Trump administration derailed the world of hundreds of thousands of young adults—DACAmented immigrants—and their families, with the declaration that the policy “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) be terminated. Enacted by President Obama in 2012, DACA provides protection from deportation for some individuals who entered the United States as children without proper documentation. The initial announcements of its end, first made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then by Trump, sparked immediate public response. There was, of course, some public support for the announcement, from immigration-restrictionist organizations as well as from those hoping the repeal would lead to more comprehensive immigration reform legislation (Alvarez, 2017; Barreto, 2017; Silverstein, 2017). However, media accounts of the repeal were overwhelmingly filled with protests as politicians, corporate executives, everyday citizens, DACAmented individuals, and their families called foul (Battaglio, 2017; King & Carcamo, 2017). In a rare directed attack on Trump, President Obama responded: “To target these young people is wrong … It is self-defeating … And it is cruel” (quoted in Kimball, 2017). Similarly, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg named the move “particularly cruel” (quoted in Shear & Davis, 2017). Even House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) initially spoke in opposition to the repeal, allegedly calling on Trump in the days before the announcement to keep the policy in place (Kopan & Acosta, 2017). By late in the day on September 5th, Trump had revised his initial declaration and established a window of negotiation, tweeting “Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA … If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!” and declaring his support for the DACAmented: “I have a love for these people” (quoted in Kopan, 2017).