The Justice Department announced on Tuesday it is ending DACA, the Obama-era program that allowed undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to remain in the country, while also giving Congress a six-month window to possibly save the policy. Under the plan, announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Trump administration will stop considering new applications for legal status dated after Tuesday, but will allow any DACA recipients with a permit set to expire before March 5, 2018, the opportunity to apply for a two-year renewal if they apply by October 5. The Department of Homeland Security will recognize DACA authorizations until they expire at the end of their two-year lifespans, which means the program runs out at different times for different recipients, senior DHS officials said. The last authorization would end March 5, 2020.
Trump, in a lengthy statement issued after Sessions' remarks, said it was "in the best interests of our country" to "begin an orderly transition and wind-down of DACA, one that provides minimum disruption."
"In effect," the president said, "I am not going to just cut DACA off, but rather provide a window of opportunity for Congress to finally act."
"We will resolve the DACA issue with heart and compassion — but through the lawful democratic process — while at the same time ensuring that any immigration reform we adopt provides enduring benefits for the American citizens we were elected to serve," Trump said.
Trump also said he has advised the Department of Homeland Security "that DACA recipients are not enforcement priorities unless they are criminals, are involved in criminal activity, or are members of a gang."
Meanwhile, Sessions repeatedly referred to DACA as unconstitutional and criticized it as "unilateral executive amnesty." He said it "yielded terrible humanitarian consequences" and had "denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens."
"We are a people of compassion and we are a people of law. But there is nothing compassionate about the failure to enforce immigration laws," Sessions said.
"The compassionate thing is to end the lawlessness, enforce our laws, and, if Congress chooses to make changes to those laws, to do so through the process set forth by our Founders in a way that advances the interest of the nation," he continued.
The decision could affect as many as 800,000 Dreamers, as participants in the program are known, who have signed up for the program since its 2012 inception. Immigrant rights advocates have said 200,000 more have sought legal status through DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, since Trump became president.
There are approximately 154,000 individuals with DACA expiration dates between now and March 5, 2018, Homeland Security spokesman David Lapan said. Under the plan announced Tuesday, those people would have just one month, until October 5, to apply for renewal, a tight deadline that is likely to present a major logjam as the U.S. processes the applications.
Trump’s decision indicates he’s moving ahead with his hardline immigration campaign promises — despite multiple walk-backs from him on the issue of DACA — and came on the same day that Republican officials from 10 states had set as a deadline for the administration to end the program.
Those officials had said they would sue the administration over DACA if Trump hadn’t ended it by Sept. 5. Led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the group said the government should stop accepting DACA renewal applications, allowing those now in effect to continue until their two-year period expires.
Signaling quick action, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that it had already begun moving ahead with an "orderly wind-down of the program," issuing a memo formally rescinding the Obama memo that had created it.
Source: NBC News
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