SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
January, 11 2018, 11:00am EDT
Contact:
212-627-2227
DREAMers + Allies Rally at Schumer's Office; Demand a Clean DREAM Act in the Federal Budget
On Wednesday, January 10th, the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) and allies joined DREAMers to rally at New York Senator Charles Schumer's midtown offices, demanding that he include a clean DREAM Act in the federal budget. Co-sponsors included the Asian American Federation, Arab American Association of New York, Chayya Community Development Corporation, CUNY DREAMers, Indivisible Nation BK, MASA, New York DREAMers, New Immigrant Community Empowerment, New York State Immigrant Action Fund, SUNY DREAMers, and 32BJ SEIU.
WASHINGTON
On Wednesday, January 10th, the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) and allies joined DREAMers to rally at New York Senator Charles Schumer's midtown offices, demanding that he include a clean DREAM Act in the federal budget. Co-sponsors included the Asian American Federation, Arab American Association of New York, Chayya Community Development Corporation, CUNY DREAMers, Indivisible Nation BK, MASA, New York DREAMers, New Immigrant Community Empowerment, New York State Immigrant Action Fund, SUNY DREAMers, and 32BJ SEIU.
A "clean" DREAM Act would provide protection for the 800,000 DREAMers without additional funding for border security and immigration enforcement. President Trump previously said that he would only endorse a DREAM Act in exchange for $18 billion in funding to build a wall along the Mexican border. Yesterday, a federal judge in San Francisco issued a pre-trial injunction that allows Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to resume for those filing renewal applications, but the injunction is not a permanent solution and should not deter efforts to pass a clean DREAM Act.
"Every day that passes without a clean DREAM Act, New Yorkers have been losing the protection to live freely and provide for their families. DREAMers have risked everything to fight this Administration's anti-immigrant agenda, but we're running out of time. Senator Schumer understands that America will not be safer or greater without a clean DREAM Act, and that's why we need him to fight for it in the federal budget," said Steven Choi, Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition.
"A clean Dream Act is the only sensible and humane choice. This is a straight forward issue. It's time to pass a clean Dream Act, and move on to the other looming issues facing our country!" Said Annetta Seecharran, Executive Director of Chhaya Community Development Corporation.
"With the deadline for the federal spending bill fast approaching, we must ensure that a clean Dream Act is passed in order to protect the future of hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients whose lives hang in the balance. We demand that Congress, President Trump, and national leaders set aside partisan politics and find a comprehensive solution for DREAMers to continue to build their lives in the only country they have ever known. Too many families have already been torn apart by this administration's immigration policies, and we will not stop fighting until our immigrant brothers, sisters, and neighbors are afforded the right to the quality of life they were promised by President Trump when he first took office," said Jo-Ann Yoo, Executive Director of the Asian American Federation.
"As a hub for recent Arab immigrants, we work tirelessly to make sure our members and clients feel safe in their new home, a place they sought for peace and equality. Congress has failed us yet again by not passing a #CleanDREAMAct in 2017. Rescinding DACA and ending TPS is tearing our families apart, creating confusion and chaos amongst our communities, and risking the safety of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people. But we will keep fighting for our DACAmented families and we won't back down until we have a clean DREAM Act and TPS protection for all our loved ones," said Rama Issa-Ibrahim, Executive Director of the Arab American Association of New York.
"Today, NICE and the day laborer community stands with our friends and families impacted by the elimination of TPS and alongside DREAMers fighting for a clean DREAMAct. We urge Senator Schumer to assure congress does the right thing and find a permanent solution for all and not at the expense of others," said Manuel Castro executive director of New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE).
Background
Congress failed to pass a clean DREAM Act before the new year, leaving thousands in limbo and terrified during the holidays. Over the past four months, more than 13,000 individuals have lost their DACA status at a rate of 122 people per day. Advocates are pressuring Minority Leader Schumer to take charge and commit to including and passing a clean DREAM Act in the spending bill.
The New York Immigration Coalition aims to achieve a fairer and more just society that values the contributions of immigrants and extends opportunity to all. The NYIC promotes immigrants' full civic participation, fosters their leadership, and provides a unified voice and a vehicle for collective action for New York's diverse immigrant communities.
LATEST NEWS
BBC Vows to Fight Trump's $10 Billion Lawsuit Over Documentary Editing
"This is about the BBC’s independence," said one former BBC official. "So they should definitely fight it."
Dec 16, 2025
The British Broadcasting Corporation vowed to fight back against President Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit filed on Monday—the latest legal challenge brought by the president against a media organization over its coverage of him.
A spokesperson for the BBC said in a brief statement on Tuesday, "We will be defending this case" after Trump filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Florida, alleging that the network defamed him and violated the state's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act when it aired edited comments he made in a speech on January 6, 2021, just before thousands of his supporters attacked the US Capitol.
Before last year's presidential election, the BBC series Panorama aired a documentary titled "Trump: A Second Chance?" The film includes a section featuring Trump's speech to a crowd in Washington, DC on January 6, with two clips of him speaking about 50 minutes apart spliced together, making it appear as though he directly urged people to march to the Capitol.
With his lawsuit, Trump has suggested the edited clip created the impression that he incited violence—though several journalists have noted that those allegations predate the documentary. The edited clip received little attention until recent months when the right-wing Daily Telegraph published details from a memo by Michael Prescott, a former BBC standards adviser with links to the Conservative Party.
In the memo, Prescott took aim at the documentary's editing and alleged a "pro-transgender bias" and "anti-Israel bias"in the BBC's news coverage.
Trump's lawsuit cites the internal review mentioned in Prescott's memo, alleging “a string of incidents that demonstrate serious bias in the corporation’s reporting.”
The BBC has publicly apologized for the editing of the documentary, but has denied that Trump has a legitimate basis for a defamation claim.
The lawsuit is Trump's latest against a media company over coverage of him. At least two cases—against ABC and CBS and its parent company, Paramount, have ended in settlements, with the companies agreeing to pay the president $16 million each. He also has a defamation case pending against the New York Times.
On Monday, Trump gave a muddled explanation of his latest lawsuit while speaking to the press at the White House, falsely claiming the BBC was accused of using AI to make him say "things [he] never said" in the documentary.
"Trump is suing the BBC. He doesn’t know why. But he’s suing anyway," said BBC presenter Sangita Myska.
Trump: "I'm suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth ... I guess they used AI or something" pic.twitter.com/VxYMDp6oZ2
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 15, 2025
Richard Tice, deputy leader of the right-wing Reform Party, expressed support for Trump's lawsuit on Tuesday and agreed with the push for "wholesale change" at the BBC. Christopher Ruddy of the Trump-aligned network Newsmax also told The Guardian that the BBC should "figure out a quick and easy settlement."
But on the network's "Today" program, former BBC Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer said that "it would be extremely damaging to the BBC’s reputation not to fight the case."
"This is about the BBC’s independence," said Damazer. "And, unlike American media organizations which have coughed up the money, the BBC doesn’t have commercial business interests that depend on President Trump’s beneficence in the White House. So they should definitely fight it."
"The BBC has likely an extremely strong case," he added. "The 1960s established a very wide margin of press freedom in a case called Sullivan v. The New York Times, from which the BBC would undoubtedly benefit... President Trump was not harmed by what the BBC mistakenly did in its Panorama edit. The program wasn’t shown in the United States. He was neither financially nor politically hurt, and the BBC should definitely fight this case."
Zoe Gardner, a researcher and commentator on migration policy in the UK, denounced "far-right politicians and pundits" for "cheering" Trump's lawsuit.
"Given the BBC is publicly funded, this is Donald Trump suing you and me," Gardner said. "It’s a pathetic cry-bully attack on journalism by a wannabe dictator and an attack on every British person."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Declares Fentanyl a Weapon of Mass Destruction as His 'Lawless Killing Spree' Escalates
One expert said the Trump White House is "replaying the Bush administration's greatest hits as farce."
Dec 16, 2025
US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order designating fentanyl a "weapon of mass destruction," a move that came hours before his administration carried out another flurry of deadly strikes on vessels in the eastern Pacific accused—without evidence—of drug trafficking.
Trump's order instructs the Pentagon and other US agencies to "take appropriate action" to "eliminate the threat of illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals to the United States." The order also warns of "the potential for fentanyl to be weaponized for concentrated, large-scale terror attacks by organized adversaries."
Brian Finucane, a senior adviser with the US Program at the International Crisis Group, said in response to the executive action that Trump is "replaying the Bush administration's greatest hits as farce," referencing the lead-up to the Iraq War. Trump has repeatedly threatened military attacks on Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico, citing fentanyl trafficking as the pretext.
Ahead of the official signing of the fentanyl order, an anonymous State Department official suggested to the independent outlet The Handbasket that the directive's "purpose is a combination of designating fentanyl cartels as terrorist organizations and creating justification for conducting military operations in Mexico and Canada."
The official also suspected "that it will be used domestically as justification for rounding up homeless encampments and deporting drug users who are not citizens," reported The Handbasket's Marisa Kabas.
Hours after Trump formally announced the order, the US Southern Command said it carried out strikes on three boats in the eastern Pacific, killing at least eight people.
"The lawless killing spree continues," Finucane wrote late Monday. "The administration justifies this slaughter by claiming there’s an armed conflict. But it won’t even tell the US public who the supposed enemies are. Of course, there’s no armed conflict. And outside armed conflict, we call premeditated killing murder."
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, argued that "Trump's classification of fentanyl as a 'weapon of mass destruction' will do nothing to salvage the blatant illegality of his summary executions off the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia because fentanyl largely enters the United States from Mexico."
On Dec. 15, at the direction of @SecWar Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted lethal kinetic strikes on three vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters. Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known… pic.twitter.com/IQfCVvUpau
— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) December 16, 2025
Monday's boat bombings brought the death toll from the Trump administration's illegal strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, which began in early September, to at least 95.
Writing for Salon last week, Drug Policy Alliance executive director Kassandra Frederique and former counternarcotics official James Saenz observed that "the US is bombing boats that have nothing to do with fentanyl or the overdose crisis devastating American communities."
"These recent military actions have negligible impact on the transshipment of illicit drugs and absolutely no impact on the production or movement of synthetic opioids. And fentanyl, the synthetic opioid responsible for most US overdoses, is not produced in Venezuela," they wrote. "These developments raise serious questions about the direction of US drug policy. We must ask ourselves: If these extrajudicial strikes are not stopping fentanyl, then what are the motives?"
"History should be a warning to us. In the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte, the drug war became a tool of fear," Frederique and Saenz added. "Thousands were killed without trial, democratic institutions were hollowed out, and civil liberties stripped away—all while drugs continued to flow into the country."
Keep ReadingShow Less
ICC Rejects Israeli Bid to Thwart Gaza War Crimes Probe
Israel is seeking to invalidate the ICC's arrest warrants for fugitive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Dec 15, 2025
Appellate judges at the embattled International Criminal Court on Monday rejected Israel's attempt to block an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes committed during the Gaza genocide.
The ICC Appeals Chamber dismissed an Israeli challenge to the assertion that the October 7, 2023, attacks and subsequent war on Gaza were part of the same ongoing "situation" under investigation by the Hague-based tribunal since 2021. Israel argued they were separate matters that required new notice; however, the ICC panel found that the initial probe encompasses events on and after October 7.
The ruling—which focuses on but one of several Israeli legal challenges to the ICC—comes amid the tribunal's investigation into an Israeli war and siege that have left at least 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and 2 million more displaced, starved, or sickened.
The probe led to last year's ICC arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation. The ICC also issued warrants for the arrest of three Hamas commanders—all of whom have since been killed by Israel.
Israel and the United States, neither of which are party to the Rome Statute governing the ICC, vehemently reject the tribunal's investigation. In the US—which has provided Israel with more than $21 billion in armed aid as well as diplomatic cover throughout the genocide—the Trump administration has sanctioned nine ICC jurists, leaving them and their families "wiped out socially and financially."
The other Hague-based global tribunal, the International Court of Justice, is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel filed in December 2023 by South Africa and backed by more than a dozen nations, as well as regional blocs representing dozens of countries.
University of Copenhagen international law professor Kevin Jon Heller—who is also a special adviser to the ICC prosecutor on war crimes—told Courthouse News Service that “the real importance of the decision is that it strongly implies Israel will lose its far more important challenge to the court’s jurisdiction over Israeli actions in Palestine."
Although Israel is not an ICC member and does not recognize its jurisdiction, Palestine is a state party to the Rome Statute, under which individuals from non-signatory nations can be held liable for crimes committed in the territory of a member state.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned Monday's decision, calling it "yet another example of the ongoing politicization of the ICC and its blatant disregard for the sovereign rights of non-party states, as well as its own obligations under the Rome Statute."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington, DC-based advocacy group, welcomed the ICC decision.
“This ruling by the International Criminal Court affirms that no state is above the law and that war crimes must be fully and independently investigated," CAIR said in a statement. "Accountability is essential for justice, for the victims, and survivors, and for deterring future crimes against humanity.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular