U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) joined other Democratic senators last week in sending a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to expand protections for immigrants before the end of his term.
On Wednesday, Luján spoke out about how the mass deportations planned by President-elect Trump would affect New Mexico.
In a press conference in Washington, DC, Luján said he was proud to represent over 4,500 recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), known as Dreamers, including a 27-year-old named Arlen.
“Arlen graduated from the University of New Mexico with a dual degree in computer science and sociology, and has extensive community involvement, leading food drives in his community in Belen to helping students learn to code, creating opportunities for them down the road. His contributions are immeasurable,” he said.
Luján added that in 2022, immigrants contributed $1.6 trillion to the U.S. economy.
‘Now I can assure you, all Americans will feel the economic pain of losing our immigrant brothers and sisters,” he said. “There has to be a way to work together.”
Senator Luján and colleagues from the Congressional Hispanic caucus are calling on the Biden administration to expand a protection called Temporary Protected Status for people from Ecuador, Nicaragua, and El Salvador.
Along with Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Alex Padilla (D-CA), Luján is also calling for DACA recipients to be able to renew their status more quickly.
Senator Cortez Mastro said at the press conference she wants to ensure the renewal of DACA status now before the Trump administration.
“Because we know the incoming administration is going to try to implement chaotic immigration policies that tear our families apart,” she said.
She said she saw this from Trump’s prior administration.
“I remember the calls that were coming into my office from people in Nevada who were terrified for their families because of this chaos,” she said. “But we have a chance to do something about that right now and give these families as much legal protection and reassurance as possible.”
In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, Trump repeated his campaign promise of mass deportations of undocumented people, saying that rules must be enforced. When pressed on the issue of family separation in the case of mixed-status families, he suggested the solution would be to deport the whole family regardless of immigration status.
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