(The Center Square) – U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois is urging Congress to pass the Dream Act as the second Trump administration approaches.
On the Senate floor, Durbin, D-Springfield, called President-elect Donald Trump’s rhetoric surrounding immigration “dangerous” and said he worries for immigrants and the future of the country.
“We can all agree that any undocumented immigrant found guilty of a serious crime should never be allowed to stay in the United States,” said Durbin. “But the last time the president-elect was in office, it wasn’t just criminals who were deported. We saw parents separated from their young children. Some of them are still separated to this day. And we saw dreamers, veterans and spouses of U.S. citizens deported. They weren’t criminals. Many of them were pillars in their home communities.”
Durbin called Trump’s mass deportation policies chaotic and cruel.
State Rep. Adam Niemerg, R-Dieterich, said it’s chaotic and cruel to allow 20 million military-aged men we know nothing about to come into the United States.
“Where was he with the Laken Riley murder? When that poor girl was dragged into the woods and beaten to death. He sits there and says, ‘chaos and cruelty,’ when it comes to Trump’s policies,” Niemerg said. “Chaos and cruelty is what happened to Laken Riley.”
A Venezuelan migrant, Jose Ibarra, was found guilty of murder and other charges in the February killing of Riley, who was a 22-year old college student in Georgia.
In July 2023, Durbin was criticized for taking a photo with a dreamer, Gabriel Calixto. Calixto is now a runaway murder suspect accused of stabbing Emma Shafer in Springfield, Illinois. A warrant was issued for his arrest on July 12, 2023.
Calixto was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status at age 15, but it expired in May 2019. In 2018, while in the U.S. on DACA status, he pleaded guilty to kidnapping a girl and served time in the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Calixto was in Department of Homeland Security custody after serving two years in IDOC and getting the kidnapping charge lowered to unlawful restraint. He was re-sentenced to time served in 2020. It’s unclear how and if Calixto was released from DHS custody and how he managed to possibly commit another crime in 2023.
Reportedly, federal authorities believe Calixto fled to Mexico after the death of Shafer.
Trump told NBC that he’s interested in cutting a deal with Democrats to protect Dreamers brought to the U.S. at a young age.
“Because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age. And many of these are middle-aged people now. They don’t even speak the language of their country,” said Trump. “The Democrats have made it difficult to do anything. The Republicans are very open to the dreamers.”
Durbin said he’ll meet with Trump any time, any place to work on a deal to protect Dreamers.
On the Senate floor earlier this month, Durbin said DACA was put together by former President Barack Obama and was meant to be temporary.
“Republicans have waged a relentless campaign to overturn DACA and deport these dreamers back to countries they do not even remember,” Durbin said. “Now, this program is hanging by a thread in the courts, due to legal challenges from Republican state attorneys general and DACA recipients are forced to live with uncertainty day to day.”
Trump said the Biden Administration could have done something about dreamers.
