UN rights chief rebukes US over ending amnesty for 'Dreamers’
The top UN human rights official has voiced concern about US President Donald Trump’s decision to end an amnesty for hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought illegally to the country as children, urging the US Congress to give them "durable legal status."
"I am concerned by the government's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] program," UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said Monday at the opening of the 36th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR) in Geneva.
Zeid underscored DACA’s "positive impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of young migrants, and on the US economy and society.”
“I hope Congress will now act to provide former DACA beneficiaries with durable legal status. I am disturbed by the increase in detentions and deportations of well-established and law-abiding immigrants,” he said.
Zeid also said the number of detentions of migrants with no criminal convictions was 155 percent higher during the first five months of this year than during the same period of 2016.
"Some migrants, including longstanding residents, are now so frightened of expedited deportation they refrain from accessing police protection and courtrooms," he warned.
Trump said last week that his administration would end DACA, an Obama-era program that offers protection to young undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children.
The program allowed nearly 800,000 young immigrants, often called "Dreamers", to live, study and work in the US.
Trump had promised to get rid of the program during his presidential campaign, though he softened that rhetoric soon after being inaugurated.
The president’s anti-immigration policies have sparked protests both inside the US and abroad since he took office in January.
Thousand of activists participated in demonstrations in several US cities on Saturday to express their resentment against scrapping DACA.
Proponents of the program have criticized Trump as a demagogue who has unfairly portrayed undocumented immigrants as criminals and inherently suspicious.
Zeid also repeated his concerns over the growing racism in the US, including last month’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is also "increasingly manifested online and in public debates".
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