'We're trying to build communities': New Bedford resident wary of DACA ruling

NEW BEDFORD — The legal travails of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program are familiar to 33-year-old Abdourahmane Doumbouya.

He registered for DACA in 2012, when the Obama Administration made it official policy.

Since, it has enabled him to call the Whaling City home.

"I felt very at home because every culture that's here, I pretty much am a part of that culture," Doumbouya, a hip hop artist who goes by the stage name Caliph, said.

In 2019, Caliph was one of 53 undocumented performers on the three-time Grammy Award winning album, "American Dreamers: Voices of Hope, Music of Freedom."

With a recent court ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on the DACA program, he said he is now worried about his future in New Bedford, and not just his own.

"From my perspective, [the ruling] is bad," he said. "We're trying to build communities here. It's hard to build a community when you build a class within a community."

DACA History

DACA began when then-Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano signed a memorandum on June 15, 2012.

In order to qualify, applicants must: have come to the U.S. before they were 16, continuously resided in the U.S. since June 15, 2007, have been in school or in possession of a high school diploma or an honorable discharge from the armed forces, have no felonies, significant or multiple misdemeanors, or otherwise be deemed a threat to the U.S.

As of March 2021, more than 825,000 have taken advantage of DACA protections since the program was enacted, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

That year, the Federal Court for the Southern District of Texas Court put an injunction on the program, saying that it violated the violated the Administrative Procedures Act by not allowing space for comment; though it allowed those in the program already to continue.

On appeal to the Fifth Circuit, the program was allowed to continue for those already registered. On Oct. 5, it upheld the District Court ruling.

"Essentially, it maintains the status quo, but it also puts the future of DACA in jeopardy," Roni Amit, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Law School, said. "People who are first-time applicants are still unable to have those first-time applications processed.

"The more important question is how is the District Court gonna rule on the administrative rule. They basically bounced that back down to the District Court to make that determination."

Amit said that the program's future depends on an administrative rule proffered in late August by DHS that did allow time for a comment period, though it had very little substantive change to offer for the program.

Yet, she added, the main question, in the eyes of the court, is this merely a DHS policy? Or is it a program that confers benefits and thus outside of their purview?

"This court seems to have started to answer that question a bit," she said. "I will say, based on this Fifth Circuit decision, they certainly seem to be suggesting that this is outside of the scope of DHS' power."

Nonetheless, those protected by DACA are safe, at least in the short term.

"For now, nothing has changed in terms of where we were before this ruling," she said.

As of 2021, there were 5,180 DACA recipients in Massachusetts, according to U.S. CIS. In the Providence-Warwick statistical area, a Census geographic division which includes all of Bristol County, there are 1,160.

'I'm supposed to speak on these struggles'

Doumbouya, born in Dakar, Senegal, was brought to New Bedford by his Cabo Verdean-Portuguese mother and Guinean father when he was 6 on a tourist visa. When they overstayed, the family became undocumented.

But he did not know about his immigration status until he won an essay contest for a full scholarship to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth when he was in the fifth grade.

"You were asked like a set of questions about: What did we want to do in the future? How would we change the world?" he said. "I started to realize that my parents weren't fully happy. ... It came with a stress because of my lack of documentation. And that's when I started hearing more and more conversations about me and the topic."

Eventually, his status would prevent him from enrolling, less than a year before he was to start his classes in 2007.

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As a graduate of the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational and Technical High School, he learned coding and was able to use that as a way to earn money.

But his true passion was always hip hop, which he used to express the frustrations rooted in his status.

"When it came time to like, decide what I was going to do with my life, I realized that hip hop doesn't have too much representation for immigration," he said. "When they told my parents that we couldn't, you know, I couldn't go to school, it clicked in my head, This is my duty, this is my job.

"I'm supposed to speak on these struggles."

DACA recipients contribute to economy

After DACA became official, Doumbouya became successful. In addition to having a Grammy-winning album on his resume, he now runs several businesses in fields such as art and web design. His latest album is "Immigrant of the Year," released in 2021.

Yet, the artist said he does not feel truly free, though now with a Social Security number in hand, he has many more opportunities.

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"DACA is really like the equivalent of probation if being undocumented is being locked up, you know, because there are limits," he said. He added that he needs to renew his status every two years and pay a $500 fee with that.

Experts say this has contributed to the economy. According to a study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, DACA recipients paid almost $9 billion in taxes by 2020.

That goes to one point made by Amit, that the program's demise would impact the economy and lives.

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"I think a lot of people have lives based on DACA and a lot of employers are employing people with DACA," she said. "I think it's going to have a lot of effects on people, families, employers, if suddenly this whole class of people loses their ability to work. ... Overnight they could lose their status."

Doumbouya said that New Bedford is exhibit A for continuing the DACA program, specifically its fishing port, the country's highest grossing commercial fishing port.

"That's something that's really from our cultures," he said, referring to the historically high proportion of immigrants employed in the fishing industry. "You can see the possibilities of allowing immigrants to thrive in America.

"I feel like we're human beings and I think we should treat everybody with a fair chance at being great. And when you hinder that for somebody ... It can stop some of the greatest people from doing their greatest work."

Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@s-t.com and follow him on Twitter: @KevinGAndrade. Support local journalism and subscribe to the Standard-Times today!

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: DACA ruling raises concerns with New Bedford performing artist