President goes back to the well
Analysis: Trump’s decision is guided by his base
WASHINGTON Ban- ning refugees. Building the border wall. Ending sanctuary cities. There may be no single issue that more clearly divides President Trump’s supporters and his opponents than immigration.
Across the political spectrum, there’s widespread support for the idea of providing some form of legal status for “DREAMers” — undocumented immigrants who arrived in the USA as children and may have no memory of or allegiance to any other country.
In a poll taken after Trump’s election last year, 72% of respondents said they thought it was “important” or “very important” that immigration policy make some accommodation for those childhood arrivals. That includes 60% of those who usually identify themselves as Republicans, according to the Pew Research Center poll.
The decision about what to do with the Obama-era policy that spared DREAMers from deportation presented Trump with a stark choice: Seek consensus and move to the middle, or maintain the principles that got him elected and side with his economic nationalist base.
As he has done so many times during his presidency, Trump drew out the decision like it was a reality show cliffhanger — then, in the end, he sided with his base.
Breitbart News, home of Trump’s most unabashed supporters, called the Obama policy a “bureaucratic backdoor” to legal status. The website, once again run by Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, cast the decision as a victory by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other immigration hard-liners over members of Trump’s own family — daughter Ivanka and son-inlaw Jared Kushner — who wanted to keep DACA.
Trump decided only Congress — not the president — can grant legal status to undocumented immigrants.
“He wants to be able to make a decision with compassion, but at the same time, you can’t let emotion govern,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. “And this has to be something where the law is put in place, and it’s something that he would support if Congress puts it before him.”
Even the timing of the announcement made clear that Trump felt pressure from the right. Ten Republican state attorneys general had threatened to sue the Trump administration if it didn’t end the program by Tuesday.
Trump came to the decision with some apparent ambivalence. Unlike President Obama — who announced the policy himself in a Rose Garden speech in 2012 — Trump left it to his attorney general to deliver the news.
Speaking at the Justice Department, Jeff Sessions played hardliner. He repeatedly referred to DREAMers as “illegal aliens.” Failing to enforce immigration laws, he said, “has put our nation at risk of crime, violence and even terrorism.”
An hour later, Trump delivered a softer statement in writing. “I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents,” he wrote. “But we must also recognize that we are a nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.”
“I have a great heart for these folks we’re talking about, a great love for them. And people think in terms of children, but they’re really young adults,” the president said later that afternoon. “I have a love for these people, and hopefully, now Congress will be able to help them and do it properly.”
Time will tell if Congress will do that.