WASHINGTON — Wendolynne Perez, a 23-year-old “Dreamer” immigrant and recent English major graduate of Florida International University, says she’s looking forward to a bright future in America, including law school.

She arrived in the United States from Peru with her undocumented parents as a child, fleeing economic collapse at home. Five years ago, when she was vulnerable to deportation, the Obama administration acted to assure her — and thousands of other co-called Dreamers — they could apply to stay, go to college and obtain work permits.

Tuesday scores of those Dreamers – small children brought to the U.S. by parents who entered the country illegally – gathered under gray skies and drizzle in Lafayette Square across from the White House to urge President Donald Trump to continue the Obama-era protection.

Perez, who participated in the rally, went on to become an American citizen under the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. But there are still more than 750,000 Dreamers who could lose their status if Trump or the courts decide to terminate the program next month.

Trump threatened to eliminate the protections for the Dreamers as a presidential candidate, but later in office said he would not act swiftly. “It’s a decision that’s very, very hard to make,” he told news reporters in July. “I really understand the situation now.”

Still, the program is under attack from illegal immigration critics, including the Republican attorneys general from 10 states, led by Texas’ Ken Paxton, who say they will file legal action to discontinue the program if Trump doesn’t move to phase it out by Sept. 5.

The Dreamers rally in Washington – and several other cities – was aimed at making the case for continuation. Participants defended the program as helping immigrants who had no say in coming to the U.S. become hard-working, law-abiding people who know no other country as their home.

Placards defined the rally. “Have a heart, don’t strip our legal status,” read one. “No more families torn apart,” said another. “Legalize me,” pleaded a third.

Police arrested 20 of the demonstrators, according to rally organizers. Among those handcuffed and taken away was Democratic Congressman Luis Guiterrez of Illinois, who participated in a sit-in on the public sidewalk outside the White House grounds.

Heightening fears was the looming deadline facing Trump and the threat of a lawsuit to overturn the DACA program, which allows undocumented immigrants without criminal records who were brought to the U.S. as children to apply for temporary residency, obtain work permits, attend college, get a Social Security number and a driver’s license.

The program requires the dreamers to reapply for temporary status every two years. Polls have shown dreamers are viewed sympathetically by many Americans.

The objecting attorneys general, including West Virginia’s Patrick Morrisey, wrote U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, disputing the Obama administration’s authority to grant the Dreamers protection but they did not call for immediate deportation.

Instead, they asked the Trump administration not to grant legal status to any more children brought to the U.S illegally, and not to renew the applications of current dreamers when they reapply for legal status.

The anniversary of the DACA program comes only days after Trump was criticized for being slow in criticizing the white supremacists protest in Charlottesvile, Virginia, that resulted in violence and the death of one counter-protester and injuries to several others.

That could signal the extreme right’s influence over Trump’s advisors, said Luis Aguilar, 29, of Alexandria, Virginia, who participated in Monday’s Dreamers demonstration and whose parents brought him illegally to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 10.

Should Trump phase out the program it would end the relief Greisa Martinez said she felt when the DACA program was authorized by President Barack Obama in 2012.

Martinez, advocacy director for the group United We Dream, told the rally she was 7 when her parents brought her across the Rio Grande River to the United States from Mexico.

Before the Dreamers program, she said, she “lived with terror in my stomach I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. I know there are people who don’t want me here.”

Perez, the Peruvian immigrant, said five years under the Dreamers program meant she could go to college and work without looking over her shoulder. She said she finished in the top 10 percent of her high school in Miami, but still faced an uncertain future because she could not go to college or work legally without the DACA program.

“Now,” said Perez, “I can work and support myself and my family.”

But to many conservatives that’s part of the problem.

The Dreamers program “harms working-class voters, the very people who put Trump over the top,” wrote Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, in an op-ed in the National Review earlier this month.

Camarota, whose group has advocated for tougher immigration laws, wrote that many U.S. born residents, ages 16 to 29, are unemployed and need greater consideration.

Republican Congressman Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania also cited the struggles young Americans face in finding jobs when he introduced legislation in February making it illegal for dreamers to receive work permits.

“Jobs are for people here legally,” he said then.

Others who have called for tougher immigration laws, such as Jessica Vaughan, policy director for the Center for Immigration Studies, said the impact of the Dreamers on job opportunities is unclear.

“It stands to reason that there are some Americans and legal immigrants who have been displaced from jobs as a result of the issuance of these work permits,” she said. “But it is hard to know how many.”

A survey in April by Morning Consult found 78 percent of registered voters, and 73 percent of Trump supporters, said Dreamer immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country.

Contact reporter Kery Murakami at kmurakami@cnhi.com.