President Donald Trump
DHS Secretary Jeff Sessions
House Speaker Paul Ryan
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
June 7, 2018
President Trump, DHS Secretary Sessions, Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority Leader McConnell:
We write to urge you to reinstate the Advance Parole provision for DACA recipients, to continue to operate on the same terms in place as before it was suspended on Sept. 5, 2017, and to resume granting requests for the I-131 Advance Parole travel permits for DACA recipients.
Since Sept. 5, 2017, when the administration rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, simultaneously, DHS also suspended the Advance Parole provision for DACA recipients. Advance Parole is an immigration travel document (Form I-131) issued by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which enables DACA recipients to be paroled into the United States, after short trips abroad for humanitarian, educational and/or employment purposes.
This is no longer the case and the consequences have been devastating.
In particular, the suspension of Advance Parole has caused an unacknowledged humanitarian crisis for countless of Dreamers and their families, especially when severe illness and/or sudden death of immediate relatives has occurred, and humanitarian Advance Parole has been denied.
For instance, Mayra Yazmin Garibo, a Cal State Dominguez Hills senior and DACA recipient, went through an emotional and humanitarian crisis when her father passed away in an accident in Mexico on January 11, 2018. As a participant of the CMSC’s California-Mexico Dreamers Study Abroad Program, we helped Ms. Garibo immediately to gather all the necessary documentation and to apply for an emergency humanitarian Advance Parole permit to attend her father’s funeral, and to join her grandparents and family in those times of emotional hardship.
However, her Advance Parole request was denied twice based on the premise that USCIS was no longer accepting or approving any Advance Parole applications after September 5th, 2017, despite the January 9, 2018 federal court order that forced the government to re-open the DACA program.
Thus, Mayra was unable to pay the last respects to her beloved father whom she had not seen in 17 years. Moreover, her 87-year old paternal grandfather has cancer and Mayra is still waiting approval of a humanitarian parole, to be able to care for him and ensure that he is being properly taken care of in place of her father, who used to take care of him.
Like Mayra, there are stories of DACA recipients who are suffering similar trauma, directly related to the punitive, arbitrary, and capricious suspension of Advance Parole, and causing irreparable emotional, psychological and physical harm to Dreamers, as depicted by the CMSC’s documentary “Advance Parole” released on June 4, 2018.
Thus, we urge you to promote and support the Advance Parole Campaign that has been launched by the California-Mexico Studies Center and many other concerned organizations, to advocate for DACA recipients’ need to receive Advance Parole authorization to travel abroad for humanitarian, educational, and employment purposes, as it was prior to September 5, 2017.
Denial of Advance Parole for DACA recipients, as provided prior to the cancelation of DACA is causing severe irreparable harm to Dreamers who are facing a humanitarian crisis, such as the loss of an immediate family member at their place of origin, or for justified educational and employment purposes.
Please terminate this inhumane and discriminatory application of the law and reinstate the Advance Parole provision of DACA for Dreamers.
Respectfully yours,
Prof. Armando Vazquez-Ramos, President/CEO & Lidieth Arevalo, Media Director
