As DACA split-up starts, D.C. still split
Program’s phaseout to begin after no legislative progress
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will begin unraveling the Obama-era program shielding from deportation people brought to the country illegally as children, though a split Congress has made no progress on writing similar protections into law as President Donald Trump asked.
The phaseout of the 5year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program begins at midnight Thursday. After that, the administration will no longer accept or process new or renewal applications for DACA protection, even if they were mailed before the deadline.
Now, with five months to go before hundreds of people daily begin losing their legal status, Congress is struggling to respond to Trump’s request for a legislative solution, over an issue that has traditionally divided lawmakers along partisan lines.
The popularity of the so-called Dreamers, however, has prompted a number of Republicans to favor action to provide them with legal status, even as conservative hard-liners continue to denounce such legislation as “amnesty.”
“We need to stop talking about it and solve it,” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a Republican who has co-sponsored one proposal, said this week at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “We know what a reasonable solution is and we should provide it.”
Permits issued before the deadline to live, work and serve in the military will begin to expire after March 5, continuing over the following two years. When Trump announced last month that he was ending the program, he said the delay gave Congress six months to send him legislation to put alternative protections into law for the roughly 800,000 immigrants who have qualified for two-year permits to remain in the U.S. without threat of deportation.
Of the estimated 154,000 people eligible to apply for renewals, about 118,000 had sent in applications to the three federal processing centers in Chicago, Dallas as Phoenix by Wednesday, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Officials will only process applications received by the end of the day Thursday and will not consider forms postmarked Thursday but arriving later, said David Lapan, spokesman for the Homeland Security Department.
That left some 34,000 DACA beneficiaries who had yet to file in the final days before the deadline and could lose their protected status or their authorization to work.
In a related matter, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California on Thursday filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of beneficiaries alleging that even before its DACA phaseout, the administration has been revoking beneficiaries’ protections for minor offenses like traffic infractions or charges for which they are ultimately cleared.
Democrats in Congress, including Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, repeatedly urged the department to extend Thursday’s deadline, especially for people living in disaster zones in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus asked the administration to reset the deadline to January.
The Trump administration refused to move the dates.
Thursday’s deadline was “both cruel and arbitrary,” said Lorella Praeli, director of immigration policy at the ACLU.
Immigration advocates have scrambled to notify those who were eligible for a final renewal to take action, and expressed frustration that the government didn’t reach out to DACA beneficiaries to alert them to the changes.
Since 2012, under President Barack Obama’s order, people who qualify have been able to apply for protected status if they paid a $495 fee and submitted to a federal background check. Renewals every two years required the same steps.
Trump “very much” wants Congress to find a solution for the young immigrants, Michael Dougherty, a senior immigration policy official at the Department of Homeland Security, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
“They’re a benefit to the country, as are many immigrants coming in,” Dougherty said. “They are a valuable contribution to our society. We need to regularize their status through some legal means.”
The White House is expected to send guidelines to Congress soon for what it wants to see in legislation. An immigration task force of House Republicans formed by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has been meeting almost daily to assess options that could win majority support.
Democratic leaders — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — said Trump told them in mid-September that he was willing to sign the DREAM Act as part of a broader package that also increased border security. But some Republicans in Congress and the administration have cast doubt on Trump’s commitment to the Democrats on the young immigrants.
“If they’re backing off it because of pressure from the hard right, America ought to know,” Schumer said.