Trump Ends DACA
The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, through which about 800,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children have gained the right to work and temporary protection against the risk of deportation. The administration said it will phase out the program, which was established by President Obama in 2012, after a six-month period to give Congress a chance to act on legislation that could restore the program.
In a Tweet on Tuesday evening, Trump said, “Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can't, I will revisit this issue!”
The Department of Homeland Security said earlier in the day it would not terminate existing DACA permits, which are good for two years, and that it would continue to adjudicate requests for renewals “on an individual, case-by-case basis” for those whose benefits are due to expire on or before March 5, 2018, and who apply for renewal by Oct. 5. However, initial DACA applications filed after Sept. 5 will not be considered.
“This is a gradual process, not a sudden phaseout,” Trump said in a White House statement. “Permits will not begin to expire for another six months, and will remain active for up to 24 months. Thus, in effect, I am not going to just cut DACA off, but rather provide a window of opportunity for Congress to finally act.”
Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions characterized the DACA program as an unconstitutional overreach by the Obama administration. “The executive branch through DACA deliberately sought to achieve what the legislative branch specifically refused to authorize on multiple occasions,” Sessions said. “Such an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch.”
"The effect of this unilateral executive amnesty, among other things, contributed to a surge of minors at the southern border that yielded terrible humanitarian consequences," Sessions said. "It also denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs." (Vox fact-checked and challenged those claims, and others in Sessions's speech, here.)
Trump's decision on DACA came in response to a legal threat from a group of state attorneys general from the president's own party, who said they would sue the administration over the program if he did not move to eliminate it by Tuesday. Republican state officials had previously sued, successfully, to block Obama’s attempt to extend DACA-like protections to undocumented immigrants who have children who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents in a case that effectively ended with a 4 to 4 deadlock in the Supreme Court.
Supporters of DACA, including about 100 immigration law professors who wrote a letter to Trump in August, have defended the program’s legality, arguing that there is “no question” that DACA “is a lawful exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”
“Let’s be clear: the action taken today isn’t required legally,” former president Obama said in a statement posted on his Facebook page. “It’s a political decision, and a moral question. Whatever concerns or complaints Americans may have about immigration in general, we shouldn’t threaten the future of this group of young people who are here through no fault of their own, who pose no threat, who are not taking away anything from the rest of us." https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/06/trump-administration-announces-plans-wind-down-daca-after-six-months