Oscar Juarez-Luna, an immigrant who lives in Longmont illegally, hopes attending President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress “will put a face on the issue” of the need for Congress “to really take a leadership role in fixing the broken immigration system.”
Juarez-Luna, who will sit in the gallery as a guest of U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Boulder), serves as a spokesman for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition but said he’ll represent himself, his family and members of the area’s immigrant community while in Washington, D.C.
Juarez-Luna is a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program created by President Barack Obama’s administration to allow some immigrants who illegally entered this country as children to be eligible for work permits and get deferments of deportation proceedings.
Polis said in a statement that Juarez-Luna and others like him who were brought here as children, went to school here and want to remain as legal residents by satisfying certain conditions that would be set in the proposed DREAM Act — a not-yet-passed federal law — “represent what hold dear in the United States — a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws. We must show President Trump how aspiring Americans make us greater, if only we let them. I stand by Oscar and hard-working immigrants like him on the night of the joint address, and every day before and thereafter.”
Polis’ staff said Juarez-Luna moved with his family to the United States from Mexico when he was a young child. He grew up only knowing the United States as home and even wanted to serve the country in the military. But when he tried to enlist, he learned he was unable to do so.
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