Paul Bass Photo
Sergio Olmedo-Ramirez.
Sergio Olmedo-Ramirez added a personal note when he joined New Haven officials Tuesday in calling for resistance to President Trump’s decision to deport children of undocumented immigrants: He’s one of those children. And he may have to leave the country he considers home.
Olmedo-Ramirez was among the speakers at a City Hall press conference Tuesday afternoon called to criticize Trump’s announcement that his administration is ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy that currently allows an estimated 800,000 young people (known as “Dreamers”) nationwide, and 10,000 in Connecticut, to remain legally in the country. Trump said he considers the policy, enacted by his predecessor, to be unlawful.
Before the event began, Olmedo-Ramirez, who’s 22, called Trump’s decision “heartbreaking.”
“We feel betrayed,” he said. “We’ve done everything on our side to be law-abiding citizens to do everything right. We have careers. We have jobs. What’s going to happen to the community we serve?’
Olmedo-Ramirez serves New Haven’s Latino community as a staff organizer for the not-for-profit Junta for Progressive Action. He came to the U.S. at 9‑years-old from Pueblo, Mexico, he said. He attended the elite Hopkins School in Westville; he worked at Dunkin’ Donuts to help pay the bills, he said. He then attended Santa Clara University in California, where “the Jesuits” who teach there “taught us to set the world on fire.”
Mayor Toni Harp pledged to have the city “resist this effort” by Trump to attack “a cornerstone of the American dream.”
Olmedo-Ramirez’s boss, Junta Executive Director Sandra Trevino, called Trump’s decision “heartless, vindictive, cruel.”
Like Trevino and other speakers, New Haven State Rep. Juan Candelaria called on Congress to pass a “clean” immigration bill that would keep the Dreamers in the U.S. and establish a pathway to citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million undocumented people already here.
City Commission on Equal Opportunities (CEO) chief Angel Fernandez-Chavero spoke of the loss to the country if so many hard-working Dreamers have to leave. “Nobody came to this country unless they have incredible drive,” he said.
Fair Haven Alder Kenneth Reveiz spoke of how this could be a “moment of unity” because of how Dreamers include black and brown people, Irish and Polish and Asian and Indian and Israeli immigrants.
When it came his time to step up to the microphone, Olmedo-Ramirez offered a personal plea: “Let us live our dreams.”
Watch the press conference in the above Facebook Live video.