Time is short for ‘Dreamers’
President Trump has been trying to blame Democrats for a crisis of his own creation. Never forget, it was Trump who rescinded the Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed hundreds of thousands of young people who wer
It was Trump who ordered that the program would cease on March 5 unless Congress acted to extend it. And now it is Trump whose demands for a border wall and other immigration crackdowns are undermining legislation to protect the “Dreamers,” for whom he claims to profess “great love.”
“Cannot believe how BADLY DACA recipients have been treated by the Democrats ... totally abandoned! Republicans are still working hard.” Trump tweeted Friday, as compromise after compromise was being raised and scuttled in the Senate.
If he had done his homework — yes, a dubious premise — Trump would have known that any action on immigration was certain to get roiled in vitriol and poison pills on Capitol Hill, even as polls make plain that Americans overwhelmingly support a legal status for undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children.
Even a straight up-ordown vote on a DACA extension would have been difficult. But Trump had to make the matter more complicated and divisive by insisting that the legislation also include an extra $25 billion for security along the U.S.-Mexico border, new restrictions on family-based legal immigration programs and the end of a lottery system for newcomers from countries with low immigration rates.
Trump’s plan received just 39 votes in the 100member Senate last week.
Some of the compromises cooked up by senators working across party lines did better, but none came close to the 60-vote threshold required to move forward. The House and Senate are in recess this week while 690,000 Dreamers worry about their future in a nation they have known as home since childhood. Time is running out. Stymied in the Senate, the Trump administration has made the challenge between now and March 5 even more arduous by embracing a House version with even more draconian controls: It would deny federal grants to sanctuary cities (such as San Francisco), direct the detention of minors arrested with their parents at the border, toughen sentences for criminals who are deported and return, and tighten checks on workers’ immigration status.
The reality is that the House version is not going to happen — and the Trump White House knows that.
There are two sources of hope for the Dreamers. One is through the courts. Federal judges in California and New York have issued temporary injunctions to extend DACA, though the Trump administration is appealing, and the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether to take up the case. The high court’s decision could come as early as Tuesday.
The other is that President Trump and the Republican majority in Congress could decide to stop playing politics with the lives of young people who have played by the rules and are, by any fair definition, our fellow Americans. Surely the president who has “great love” for the Dreamers would not have the heart — let alone the tactical and legal forces — to deport them on a mass scale.
In recent weeks, the most commonly invoked GOP excuse against the various compromises is that “the president would never sign it.”
Trump started this needless crisis. He needs to end it.