Dreamer to Trump: We know you don't care about us, so 'stop lying'

In a “major announcement” over the weekend, Trump said he’d extend three years of protections to Dreamers if Democrats would agree to pay $5.6 billion for his border wall, in order to reopen the government.

Dreamers are Americans who were brought to this country by their families at a young age. President Obama signed an executive order protecting them, but in 2017, the Trump administration announced it was terminating the program, for no reason other than to use those 800,000 young lives as bargaining chips, throwing their lives into chaos as they faced the threat of deportation.

One Dreamer went on CNN to encourage Democrats to reject the proposal.

“I don’t know if the president is completely ignorant to history, or if he has gone delusional to what happened a year ago when he ended the program himself,” Belen Sisa, a Dreamer from Arizona, told CNN host Ana Cabrera.

“If he truly cared about Dreamers, if he truly cared about undocumented youth, he would not be using us as bargaining chips,” Sisa said. “It’s like lighting a house on fire, and then going outside and trying to put it out yourself by blaming it on other people.”

Sisa said Democrats “should absolutely not take this deal.”

“I’m asking the president, please stop lying and actually put forth a solution to reopen this government,” she said.

Trump instigated the longest shutdown in U.S. history in December, when he told Democratic leaders he would be “proud” to shut down the government unless he received $5.6 billion for a wall.

Democrats have steadfastly rejected the idea of spending so much money on a useless wall, and have passed legislation in the House to reopen the government and provide paychecks to 800,000 federal workers currently going without one.

But Senate Leader Mitch McConnell will not even allow a vote on the funding bills passed by the Democratic-led House. And Trump has repeatedly threatened that he would veto them.

In a fit of desperation, Trump is now trying to use immigrant youth as additional hostages in his obsession to build a wall. But despite Trump’s overblown reputation as a ‘dealmaker,’ he is failing his job to lead the country.

The Dreamers are right: Trump needs to stop taking more hostages and just agree to reopen the government.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.