Sisters Sofia and Erica Ruales and their cousin Marlon Ruales in New York listen to the announcement that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will end. They were brought from Ecuador as small children and are now enrolled in the DACA program; later, they joined a group marching on Trump Tower in protest. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)It’s hard to hold out faith for a healing in America when we have leaders in our government who believe that healing means making American white again.
It’s particularly hard when our president surrounds himself with people like Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller – people who simply can’t, even if they wish to, hide their discriminatory inclinations.
Jeff Sessions could barely contain his glee last week as walked beaming to a podium to announce that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, “is being rescinded.”
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is a 70-year-old man who was born in Selma, Ala., and was long considered one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate. He landed in the Senate a few years after his Reagan nomination for a federal district judgeship was scuttled over allegations that he made racially offensive remarks when he was a federal prosecutor in Alabama.
So, naturally, Donald Trump would come along 30 years later and choose Sessions – one of Trump’s earliest and most outspoken supporters – as his attorney general. The choice drew criticism from the get-go.