On September 5, President Trump announced his decision to end the immigration program known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The announcement has prompted strong responses from scientists and other academics in Massachusetts. Even before it was official, MIT’s President, Rafael Reif, wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe calling the repeal of DACA “a mistake” that “would run counter to our national interests.”
On Thursday, some twenty professors were arrested during a protest in Cambridge. The scene at UMass Boston was quieter, but also focused on what the end of DACA means for undocumented students and employees.
Adán Colón-Carmona is an associate professor of biology at UMass Boston. He is a member of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science, and an alum of that society’s leadership institute.
He spent Thursday afternoon at a campus-wide meeting about the repercussions of the end of DACA and we spoke to him on Living Lab Radio.