Trump orders DACA to be ended
President: Congress must act on issue
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday took action to strip away protections from deportation for roughly 800,000 people brought into the country illegally as children, giving Congress six months to write a law to resolve their plight.
Trump’s long-awaited decision to get rid of the Obamaera program for so-called Dreamers fit a pattern of his young presidency: He offered little guidance on what he wanted done and left it to a polarized Congress to fill in the details.
If Congress fails, and the people covered under the the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, are put in jeopardy of being deported to countries they know little if at all, both Trump and some supporters have suggested it will be the
“Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!”
President Donald Trump wrote in a tweet
the fault of lawmakers.
Trump did not announce the action, which polls show is opposed by a majority of Americans. He left it to Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions to do so from the Justice Department. The president issued a written statement, though he later responded briefly to reporters’ shouted questions.
“I have a love for these people and hopefully now Congress will be able to help them and do it properly,” Trump said of the DACA recipients.
“And I can tell you,” he added, “speaking to members of Congress, they want to be able to do something and do it right. And really we have no choice. We have to be able to do something, and I think it’s going to work out very well, and long term it’s going to be the right solution.”
Tuesday night, Trump tweeted: “Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!”
Congressional leaders only tentatively committed to addressing Trump’s demand on immigration. House Speaker Paul Ryan expressed “hope” for a solution, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Congress “will continue working” on it.
Under Trump’s action, the DACA program would continue to March 5. Unless a similar program becomes law, beginning in March, beneficiaries — at a rate of roughly 1,000 a day — would start losing their ability to lawfully hold a job, buy a home, go to college and receive student loans or join the military. They would be liable to deportation.
In moving against DACA, Trump is fulfilling the promise to end it that he made during his presidential campaign. The move advances his broader effort to ratchet up immigration enforcement and reduce the number of immigrants in the country.
In his written statement, Trump said, “We must also recognize that we are a nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.”
Trump and his advisers, including Sessions in making the announcement, argue that reducing the ranks of low-skilled immigrants, legal and illegal, will raise wages and provide jobs for native-born Americans. Most economists, however, contend that reducing immigration will significantly hurt economic growth for years.
President Barack Obama, who created the program in 2012 out of frustration with Congress’s failure to act, offered rare public criticism of his successor in a lengthy post on social media
The former president called Trump’s action “a political decision, and a moral question,” adding, “Ultimately, this is about basic decency.”
Trump wrestled with the decision, he and his aides said, but ultimately decided to keep his campaign promise and let Congress resolve the issue. Even before his decision was public, Trump started the day with a tweet that signaled his intent and put the onus on lawmakers: “Congress, get ready to do your job — DACA!”
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas, a Democrat, said he is working with other state attorneys general “to build a strong case” that Trump will hurt states’ economies and education systems by ending DACA.
In a statement, Ryan called Obama’s order perhaps “well-intentioned” but “a clear abuse of executive authority.”
“It is my hope that the House and Senate, with the president’s leadership, will be able to find consensus on a permanent legislative solution that includes ensuring that those who have done nothing wrong can still contribute as a valued part of this great country.”
Sessions called Obama’s 2012 order an “unconstitutional exercise of authority” that he could not defend in court.
The Citizenship and Immigration Services agency will continue to process all renewal applications and first-time applications received before Tuesday.
As of Aug. 20, 106,341 cases were pending, including more than 34,000 people applying for a firsttime grant.
The more than 200,000 people whose grants expire between now and March 5 have one month, until Oct. 5, to apply for a renewal.
About 55,000 of those people have done so. An additional 275,344 people have deferrals that will end during 2018, and 321,920 others have protection that will lapse during the first eight months of 2019.