Will ‘dreamers’ be held hostage for Trump’s wall?

They are some of the most engaged and most productive young people in the country, and President Donald Trump may use them as bargaining chips to coerce Congress into spending taxpayer money on his border wall.

Several news operations have reported that staffers in the White House are advising Trump to use young people protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program as possible trade items to get funding for a wall, as well as other concessions.

We call these young people “dreamers,” because that is what they are.

They want to live the American dream. It’s the only reality they know, and they live under the constant threat of it being taken away.

Then-President Barack Obama issued an executive order that permits individuals who were illegally brought to the United States as children, and who don’t have serious criminal records, to seek temporary protection from deportation and renewable twoyear work permits.

Arizona is said to have about 28,000 dreamers.

There are more than 800,000 in the nation.

Republican officials from 10 states say they’ll file a lawsuit against the administration unless Trump abolishes the DACA program.

Those states are Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Idaho, Kansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Nebraska and West Virginia.

But Trump’s advisers think he could use DACA to strike a deal with Congress, something along the lines of:

If the House and Senate fund his wall, he won’t abolish DACA.

Outside the Phoenix Convention Center prior to Trump’s rally last week, I spoke for a time to a young dreamer.

He was brought here as an infant, he said. He has siblings who are American-born, but he and his parents are not.

He said he worries that his mother and father could be deported at any time, although they have lived and worked here peacefully for decades.

“A lot of those people over there,” he said, pointing to the line of Trump supporters waiting to get into the venue, “want to kick me out of the country. But it’s the only country I know.”

We’ve invested a lot in this young man, and in all of the dreamers.

We’ve provided them with an education. We’ve infused them with a sense of gratitude for their life here.

They want to work. To thrive. To give back. But the president wants his wall. His critics will now say it is better to spend money on rebuilding Houston than on building a wall. Which is true. Given that, and since he can’t get Mexico to pay for it, Trump could use dreamers as political bargaining chips.

Although using men, women and children as part of a negotiation that involves large sums of money doesn’t make them bargaining chips.

It makes them hostages.