Dreamers Are Americans

Floor Speech

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Mr. SOTO. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Espaillat), my dear friend, for yielding.

You know, we had a rally a while ago where I got to hear my dear friend from New York talk about, as he was addressing Dreamers, that they were the tears of their grandparents, they were the dreams of their parents, and how generations led up to the moment where their children can experience the American Dream. And it really got to me.

It was an emotional moment for all of us, thinking about that story that all of our families, other than our Native Americans, experienced at one time or another, that someone had to make a choice, someone had to cross an ocean or a desert, or so many other barriers to get here to the United States.

You know, as we look at what the Supreme Court, yesterday having their oral arguments, is set to rule upon, it is pretty clear that terminating DACA would not be in the best interests of the Sunshine State. It is pretty clear that ending DACA would be bad for Florida, President Trump's new home State.

When you look back, our State passed in a bipartisan fashion in the Florida legislature when I was there in-state tuition for Dreamers. We also passed a bill that I filed and was able to pass to admit Dreamers to the Florida Bar, all defined as DACA recipients.

So in a State that many people refer to as purple, being Democrats and Republicans going back and forth on close issues and in close elections, we came together to protect our Dreamers.

So I hope as the Trump administration is examining their arguments and working before the Supreme Court, that they recognize that this wouldn't serve in Florida's best interests.

In Florida, we have over 80,000 Dreamers, 30,000 of whom were DACA recipients. I wanted to spend a few minutes tonight talking about their stories, about my constituents.

The first Dreamer I would like to speak about, a DACA recipient, is Herman Younger, otherwise known as Herman to us affectionately.

Herman Younger grew up in the city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Wanting to give him and his sister a better life, his family decided to migrate to Miami, Florida, in 2002.

During this time, his parents instilled in him a respect and curiosity for the law. This led him to join the Miami-Dade Police Explorers while in high school.

In 2012, Herman applied for DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allowed him to pursue educational opportunities post high school.

After graduating, he moved to Gainesville, Florida, where he studied political science at the University of Florida with a focus on ethics and moral law.

During this time at UF, he joined the College Democrats; prelaw fraternity, Phi Alpha Delta; and Assembly for Action, a conference that aims to build community relations with local organizations.

During his junior year, Herman interned for our office in D.C., where he helped draft a bill I introduced earlier this year, the Artificial Intelligence JOBS Act, otherwise known as AI JOBS Act.

After his internship, Herman worked not only on our campaigns, but oversaw phone bankers and canvassers as our district coordinator.

Herman has since graduated from the University of Florida, receiving his bachelor's degree.

In May of this year, he spearheaded a group advocating for restaurant workers to unionize against unfair treatment and pay, and now currently holds a position with the Sierra Club as their organizing representative for the Wildlands Red Tide Campaign.

Herman continues to be an advocate for other Dreamers and hopes to fight the structural inequities and racism stemming from colonization.

Another amazing DACA recipient, an amazing Dreamer from my district is Mariana Castro.

Mariana came to the United States from Peru at the age of ten with her mother, leaving her brothers and father behind.

While her mother worked three jobs to keep food on the table for her family, Mariana excelled as a central Florida high school student. In tenth grade, she realized that regardless of her excellent grades, involvement in hundreds of community service hours, that her undocumented status would impact and potentially stop her academic career.

Opportunity shined when DACA became a reality a few months before her graduation. She graduated from Celebration High School in 2013, received the highest academic scholarship in the State, and chose the University of Florida to be her home for the next 4 years.

At the time, even with DACA, she was denied an in-state tuition rate in college and her scholarship was revoked.

Mariana paused her education and fought for the in-state tuition, that I previously mentioned in my speech here tonight, for undocumented students in the State of Florida.

Her efforts came to fruition, as she stood side by side with so many other Dreamers when we finally passed the in-state tuition bill for Dreamers 1 year later.

And what happens when we give someone like Mariana an opportunity? She returned to the University of Florida, where she graduated with a degree in biological sciences this past May.

As a DACA recipient, Mariana was unable to receive any state scholarships, Federal aid, or loans.

While being a full-time student, she worked 40 hours every week at restaurants to pay for her education out of pocket.

During her college career, she interned at my congressional office in 2018 and was later hired as a legislative aid in the Florida Senate.

She also helped start university programs that provide visibility to undocumented students, most recently institutionalizing a training for professional staff about relevant immigration laws that affect the student body, while raising funds for the Out of the Shadows scholarship, a scholarship specifically for undocumented students in Florida that she oversaw for 3 years.

Over the years, she received several awards for her advocacy in the immigrant community, including being named the only female Outstanding Student Leader in her graduating class.

Today, Mariana Castro serves as the central Florida business manager for Impact Fund, working to change public policy around immigration through coalition building and bipartisan action.

Mariana plans to obtain a combined JD and PP degree and continue to use legislation and grassroots organizing in order to fight for disenfranchised communities in the Nation.

Also, as the Civil Rights Action Task Force chair for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, I wanted to talk a little bit about the issues before the Supreme Court.

We know, with the DACA program, that the Federal Government created a promise, a promise to these eventual DACA recipients that their deportation would be deferred, and it was for an obvious reason: there are over 10 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, and these were the lowest priority for deportation because they were young people who came here through no fault of their own, that knew no other country other than this one. And I can tell you, as we heard from Mariana's story and from Herman's story, that they are indeed ambitious, and they are indeed contributing to our society.

So a promise was made to these young people, and they relied on that promise, to their detriment, by giving their information to the Federal Government every 2 years periodically. And then from there, the Federal Government should be estopped from being able to use that to deport them, to single them out in any way.

If the program is going to be wound down, it should be wound down in an ordinary and orderly fashion. And I think those who are in the program should at least be able to stay in the program, or if not, not be targeted by the Federal Government. So I think it is right that the Federal Government should be estopped from using this information to the detriment of these young people.

Then we look at the reasoning, and it is hard to see under either a rational review or a higher scrutiny that the court may apply, that there is enough information to strike down this executive order. It was done through the ordinary process.

And now the reason they originally proffered was simply that it was unconstitutional. You know, that is the purview of the Supreme Court. That is not a reason for an administration to be able to strike down a program. They actually have to give a reason beyond their own opinion that something is unconstitutional. Of course, the Trump administration didn't do that in all their procedures to try to end the law.

Then eventually in the appellate courts, they tried to come up with some statistics, come up with some justifications after they had already gone through the process, and now they want to put the genie back in the bottle. Now they want to say, ``Well, our rationale was given in the appellate court, so we should be able to just use that from the beginning,'' and that is not the way the process works.

Even then, it was the same xenophobic misrepresentations that we hear about these young people being spouted to this day.

Whether it is under estoppel or whether it is simply under the court's scrutiny, I think it is pretty clear. We hope the Supreme Court will decline to end the program or, at the very least, have an orderly termination of it, protecting these kids and stopping the Federal Government from hurting them any further.

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