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Local Dreamer on DACA ruling: 'Congress needs to act'

The United States Department of Homeland Security has resumed accepting requests to renew Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), after the federal district court in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction on the matter.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services posted on its website that it would begin accepting DACA renewals until further notice.

"We'll see if the injunction stays in place but at least as long as its in place, DACA lives for the current DACA recipients,” said Kevin Johnson, the Dean of the University of California Davis School of Law.

Johnson went on to say he thinks this is a case that the Supreme Court may end up reviewing.

The Trump White House rescinded DACA on September 5, announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, causing a flurry of those known as dreamers to rush to renew their eligibility before an October deadline.

Dreamers are the an estimated 800,000 people who entered the United States illegally as children are eligible for DACA, like Tomas Evangelista of Auburn, California.

Evangelista, 27, was brought to the United States from Mexico by his mother when he was two-years-old.

“My mother brought us here after my father abandoned our family,” Evangelista said. “And so she had a very difficult decision to make. She had to either stay in the country that we were born in and not have a future or risk everything and come to the United States."

She risked everything and brought her children into the United States illegally, they settled in Santa Barbara.

Tragedy struck his family when his mother died of cancer in 1996, Evangelista moved to Northern California to stay with extended family.

In December 2016, Evangelista began speaking out in support of DACA and the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors or the Dream Act – Proposed in 2001, it has gained and lost muster numerous times over the last 16 years but has never become law.

He founded the group California Dreamers in February 2017 and has been rallying support for undocumented immigrants ever since.

Following the recent temporary injunction made by the courts, he is urging congress to make a decision to provide relief for undocumented young people.

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