{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://gutierrez.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/press-conference-rep-guti-rrez-colleagues-call-president-obama-protect", "Press Conference: Rep. Gutirrez & Colleagues Call On President Obama to Protect DREAMers", "2016-11-17", "2016", "2016-11", "Democrat", "House", "IL", "Luis Guti\u00e9rrez", "G000535", "gutierrez.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Washington, DC \u2013 Today, Rep. Luis Guti\u00e9rrez (D-IL) joined Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) in releasing a letter they wrote to President Obama asking him to use his pardon authority to protect DREAMers with DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).\u00a0 \u201cWe urge you to exercise your Constitutional authority to provide pardons to DREAMers both retroactively and prospectively,\u201d the three lawmakers wrote.\u00a0 The full text of the letter is here:\u00a0Ltr to President on DACA and Pardon Authority - 11-2016 FINAL.pdfThey were joined at a press conference in the Capitol by Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA).In his opening statement at the press conference, Rep. Guti\u00e9rrez said:Rep. Guti\u00e9rrez went on to say:The text of the opening remarks at the press conference (as prepared for delivery) is below.Rep. Guti\u00e9rrez represents the Fourth District of Illinois, is a Member of the Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, and is the Co-Chair of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.\u00a0\n\tWe are here because we all need to take a stand.\u00a0 We need to stand up for what is right and make sure our communities do not despair or feel alone.\n\tThere are 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country.\u00a0 There are 5 million U.S. citizen children who have a parent who is undocumented.\u00a0 And there are almost 750,000 young people who came forward, registered with the government and passed background checks as part of the DACA program.\n\tThat is the group we are talking about today, but let us be clear, the entire community is vulnerable and this is just the first of many strategies we are evaluating and calling for\u00a0 to do what we can to help make sure everyone is in a safe place.\n\tRight now, immigrant communities are frightened, and by that I mean citizens, legal immigrants, and undocumented immigrants, most of whom have lived here for one or two decades.\u00a0 They are worried that their families will be destroyed, that they will lose their businesses and their livelihoods.\u00a0 They are worried that the education they worked so hard for for their children \u2013 almost all of whom are American citizens \u2013 will go up in smoke.\u00a0 They have no options to become legal in the United States or to leave and come back legally, and yet their lives and their children\u2019s lives are here in this country.\n\tThey are not the only communities that are frightened by the election of Donald Trump.\u00a0 Children in Muslim families, LGBT families, across communities of color, low-income families, even women who have been victimized by sexual assault and violence \u2013 there is very widespread fear among people who are worried they will be targeted with violence, punitive policies, discrimination and harassment.\u00a0\n\tAnd the greatest impact is on children.\u00a0 This week I spoke at a press conference at Lurie Children\u2019s Hospital in Chicago with officials from the state, county and city who have seen a 200% increase in calls to suicide prevention and counseling services in the City of Chicago and 250% nationwide.\u00a0\n\tThe fear is widespread and dangerous.\n\tWe will be working over the coming months to identify as many ways as we can to help our fellow Americans protect themselves and make their families and their children safe.\n\tFor us, action is a matter of life and death.\n\tWe are starting by calling on President Obama to provide relief while he is still in office for one particular group, DREAMers who came forward and registered with the government.\u00a0\n\tWe are asking the President to pardon them for their undocumented status, which by definition happened when they were juveniles.\n\tThis would not give them a permanent safe place, but it is a start.\u00a0\n\tThis group has already been vetted by the federal government.\n\tThey are more at risk because they registered and gave up their addresses and fingerprints.\n\tAnd everybody knows that they are leaders and the line of first defense in immigrant communities.\u00a0\n\tTheir brave advocacy \u2013 by coming forward and declaring that they are here and are proud to fight for their community and their families \u2013 it has energized immigrant communities and lit a fire under old people like all of us in the U.S. Congress.\u00a0\n\tThey have become role models for rest of the community\u2014role models for all of us, for the nation, really.\n\tWhen President Obama ran for reelection in 2012, he ran an ad in Spanish \u2013 maybe you remember it.\u00a0 In the ad he said he granted DACA to DREAMers because he saw the same values and aspiration inculcated in DREAMers as he saw in his own two daughters.\n\tAll we are asking is for the President to continue his commitment; to continue seeing in these young American children the same hopes as he sees in his daughters.\u00a0 To follow through on his promise to put them in a safe place where they can work hard and achieve everything they can achieve in life.\n\tLook, in 2012, President Obama embraced the DREAMers, put them on in prime time at his convention, and Democrats continued to place DREAMers in prominent roles in the Clinton and Sanders campaigns.\n\tAs Democrats, as parents, as leaders, as Americans, we simply cannot let those who trusted their government and came forward to now twist in the wind.\u00a0\n\tWe will fight for our community and not just the DREAMers.\n\tIf you ask the DREAMers themselves, they will tell you it is not just about us, we need our families too and we agree with them.\n\tWe need a broad, unified, multi-faceted plan to keep families together and push back on Donald Trump\u2019s mass deportation plan.\n\tAnd let\u2019s be clear, when Trump says 2 to 3 million immigrants are criminals and gangbangers, he is lying and it means he intends to do massive sweeps in immigrant communities.\u00a0 This is no different than when Trump during the campaign called Mexicans rapists and drug dealers.\u00a0 He wants to paint us all with the same brush.\n\tWhen he appoints Steve Bannon, Kris Kobach, Jeff Sessions, Jan Brewer or Joe Arpaio to senior positions, he means that mass deportation is coming.\n\tWhat we are saying is we will use every peaceful, political, and social means necessary to keep families together and stand up for fairness and justice.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://gutierrez.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/press-conference-rep-guti-rrez-colleagues-call-president-obama-protect"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8138620760291815, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}