9.8.17 

Suggested lead: A state representative with a personal and professional connection to Washington “Dreamers” is speaking out.  Dan Frizzell has more.

Wrap [78: total]: Lawmakers in Washington state were quick to condemn the Trump administration’s announcement this week that it would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.  Without congressional action, Trump’s rejection of the Obama-era program could result in the forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of young people, popularly known as Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. as children, including nearly 18-thousand here in Washington.  Representative Lillian Ortiz-Self, a Mukilteo Democrat who cosponsored Washington state’s version of the DREAM, was one of the first to state her opposition to the president’s order.

ORTIZ-SELF: “This situation is horrific.  Young people who have put their faith in a promise made to them are now faced with a dilemma of the President taking that promise away from them.  They have played by the rules, and should not have to live in fear.  We have young people who have dreams and aspirations like everyone else, and leaving them in ambiguity is not OK.” [:22]

Ortiz-Self is a school counselor when not serving in Olympia, and has worked with many of these young people who now find their futures in limbo. That uncertainty should end, one way or the other, by the end of February, when the Dream program will end if not rescued by a Congress that has been unable to agree on immigration reform in the last two decades.  In Olympia, Dan Frizzell.