Hundreds of Stony Brook University students, staff and local community members marched through campus Thursday afternoon to protest the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The program currently protects nearly 800,000 so-called dreamers who came illegally to the United States as children.

Evelyn Mercedes is from the Dominican Republic, and is now a senior at Stony Brook.

"I’ve been here since I was 4 years old, so now this news is very unfair and heartbreaking. We just want to be able to live in this country and get an education and succeed in life,” she says.

DACA was implemented in 2012 through an executive order signed by President Obama. President Trump is now scrapping the order and giving Congress six months to come up with legislation to protect the dreamers.

Rep. Peter King says he's in support of protecting the dreamers.

"I am supporting legislation that would provide legal status to dreamers, provided that they have no criminal record, that they are in school or they are in the military or are gainfully employed,” he says.

King says DACA is something that has to be done by law, and it can’t be done by a president's executive order.

Linda Obernauer, of Nissequogue, says she’s afraid that the president is going to use the dreamers as a bargaining chip to get his southern border wall passed.