Jeff Bezos donates $33M to send 1,000 Dreamers to college
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, wants to help send 1,000 Dreamers to college.
According to CNN, Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, donated $33 million to TheDream.US. The national scholarship fund will go to eligible graduating high school seniors who are part of the DACA program.
The grant, which is the largest in the history of the organization, will see 1,000 Dreamers get $33,000 over the course of four years to help pay for college. The students will go to one of 76 universities in 15 states that partner with the program.
“MacKenzie and I are honored to be able to help today’s Dreamers by funding these scholarships,” Bezos said.
Bezos, who is the richest person in the world, also signed a letter along with several other CEOs this week asking Congress to act to protect the DACA program. The CEOs said that the loss of the DACA program would hurt the economy.
— Black students warn racism is ‘running rampant’ at their Sacramento high school —
Defending the Dreamers
Bezos and other CEOs aren’t the only ones acting to try to help the Dreamers.
On Tuesday, a federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction ordering the continuance of DACA protections.
According to the New York Times, Judge William Alsup of the Federal District Court in San Francisco said that the federal government must “maintain the DACA program on a nationwide basis” while President Donald Trump‘s decision to end the program is still being challenged legally.
In September, Trump moved to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. He claimed that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had created the program illegally and that it was an overreach of executive power.
However, Judge Alsup asserted that the Department of Homeland Security has the authority to grant temporary protections like those provided under DACA and has had that power for some time.
If the administration appeals the injunction, it could go all the way to the Supreme Court, putting the fates of the Dreamers in the hands of the highest court in the land.
