Activists in Texas are preparing to launch protests on two fronts, with a harsh immigration law set to come into effect just as fears grow that Donald Trump will end a programme that gives protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants who arrived as children.

NBC News reported on Friday that Trump “appears likely to pull the plug” on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) policy started by the Obama administration in 2012.

About 800,000 young people who were brought by their parents to the US before they were 16 and who have lived in the country since 2007 – known colloquially as “Dreamers” – have been granted relief from deportation. It is a status that must be renewed every two years. Most live in California or Texas.

Trump pledged on the campaign trail to eliminate the programme and it has seemed at risk since he took power and pursued a slew of tough immigration policies. He said at a news conference in February he would “deal with Daca with heart”, but Texas is among a group of 10 Republican-led states pressuring the administration to end Daca.

In 2014, Texas led a coalition of states that successfully sued to stop the implementation of another Obama-era programme, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (Dapa). The Trump administration formally scrapped Dapa in June.

A couple weeks later, Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, wrote to Jeff Sessions, the US attorney general, calling for Daca to be phased out.

“Just like Dapa, Daca unilaterally confers eligibility for work authorization and lawful presence without any statutory authorization from Congress,” Paxton and the other signatories wrote.

The letter threatens legal action if steps to dismantle Daca are not under way by 5 September. Three days before then, immigrant rights groups are planning a march and concert in Austin to follow a rally on 1 September, the day state law SB4 is scheduled to go into effect – barring a possible ruling from a federal judge who is considering whether to block it.

I am super-scared, I am really angry too. Angry that these politicians think our lives simply don’t matter Mona Ramirez, Jolt activist

Signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott in May, on Facebook Live and with almost no notice, SB4 effectively outlaws so-called sanctuary cities – places where local law enforcement limits or refuses co-operation with federal immigration agents – and gives police the right to ask the immigration status of people they detain.

The measure has inspired a number of resistance events, including teenage girls in dresses holding a quinceañera at the capitol in July.



“I think SB4 has had a huge impact on mobilising, and not just immigrants,” said Tania Mejia of Jolt, a Texas-based group aiming to raise Latino voter turnout. “Our mission is to get more Latinos engaged in the political process.

“While we do have Daca recipients and undocumented immigrants, the majority of our youth members have been born here in Texas.”

Mona Ramirez, a Jolt activist, was born in Mexico and brought to the US aged six. She did not know she was undocumented until she was in high school. Now 24, she and her three siblings are Daca recipients and she has a young daughter who is a US citizen. She worries that SB4 and the possible end of Daca increase the risk of her family being split up through deportations.

“I come from a mixed-status family so there’s always been this [anxiety over] what happens when half of the family’s no longer there,” Ramirez said. “I’ve felt like my life has been played with since I arrived here.

“They just give us a little crumb to calm us down for a little bit and then we just kind of like wait until the next time that they want to use us for their political games.

“I am super-scared, I don’t know what’s going to happen, I am really angry too. Angry that these politicians think our lives simply don’t matter because we are not from here.”

Greg Casar, an Austin city council member, is concerned that after the backlash to Trump’s much-criticised response to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville earlier this month, the president will revert to a familiar theme that plays well with his base: demonising immigrants, this time Daca holders.

“Any time that Donald Trump gets in trouble for just being himself it’s immigrant communities who suffer,” Casar said.

On Friday night, Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Phoenix-area sheriff who was convicted of contempt of court over his refusal to stop racially profiling Latinos in Arizona.

A Texas-born son of Mexican immigrants, Casar was one of a group of demonstrators arrested for trespassing in May during a sit-in at Abbott’s office to protest SB4.

Proponents say the measure supports the rule of law, but it is opposed by police chiefs in big cities on the basis that it will erode community trust and lead to more reluctance to report crimes. Critics also argue that minor events such as traffic stops will become a gateway to racial profiling and increased deportations.



Texas’s biggest cities – Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin – as well as other local entities have joined a lawsuit against SB4 that was heard in June by Orlando Garcia, a federal district judge in San Antonio. Activists are hopeful that Garcia will rule the law unconstitutional this week.

Casar said that it has already had consequences: given the state’s growing anti-immigrant political climate and the threat posed by the new law, some undocumented people have moved.

“Some already left Texas [for] other states in the south west that are seen as less dangerous for them to live in, which is horrible and saddening but I understand it,” he said.

“Even if we are able to block it there’s still so much work that has to be done to defeat the root causes of why this law exists in the first place.”