On Tuesday night, after President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, TMZ caught comedian George Lopez to ask him what he thinks about the way things are going. The comedian laughed but then got real about residents with DACA status, a topic currently at the center of conflict on Capitol Hill.
Lopez also told TMZ that he’s ditching his clubs and golfing to stand in solidarity with the recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
It’s unclear what Lopez refraining from playing golf would do to help DACA recipients, known as Dreamers, but he seems pretty serious about it. There are currently 800,000 undocumented Dreamers living in the U.S. who were brought over by their parents as children.
The DACA program, which protects Dreamers from deportation, was established by the Obama Administration in 2012 but was rescinded by Trump in September 2017. At the beginning of January, a federal judge in California issued an injunction to Trump’s decision, allowing undocumented immigrants to temporarily continue to apply to the program.
The recent government shutdown hinged on a compromise between Democrats and Republicans to reach a deal that protects Dreamers. After a 69-hour shutdown, the two sides still couldn’t come to an agreement but reopened the government under the terms that they will make a decision by Feb. 8.
On Jan. 19, the same day as the government shutdown, the Justice Department filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to review the injunction keeping the DACA program going. The Supreme Court has yet to respond to the request that seeks to overturn the injunction and end the program.
In the mean time, there’s plenty that celebrities and regular folks alike can do to support Dreamers and other immigrants whose livelihoods can be threatened by government policy—like donate money to college funds or support the families of immigrants—so maybe Lopez can keep his golf clubs after all.
H/T TMZ