Announcement to End DACA Will Be Tomorrow?
Eliana Johnson on Politico.com broke the news that
“President Donald Trump has decided to end the Obama-era program that grants work permits to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as children, according to two sources familiar with his thinking. Senior White House aides huddled Sunday afternoon to discuss the rollout of a decision likely to ignite a political firestorm — and fulfill one of the president’s core campaign promises.
The administration’s deliberations on the issue have been fluid and fast moving, and the president has faced strong warnings from members of his own party not to scrap the program.
Trump has wrestled for months with whether to do away with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA. But conversations with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who argued that Congress — rather than the executive branch — is responsible for writing immigration law, helped persuade the president to terminate the program and kick the issue to Congress, the two sources said.
In a nod to reservations held by many lawmakers, the White House plans to delay the enforcement of the president’s decision for six months, giving Congress a window to act, according to one White House official. . . .
White House aides caution that — as with everything in the Trump White House — nothing is set in stone until an official announcement has been made.
Trump is expected to formally make that announcement on Tuesday, and the White House informed House Speaker Paul Ryan of the president’s decision on Sunday morning, according to a source close to the administration.”
President Trump regularly criticized DACA during the 2016 presidential campaign. A draft executive order leaked in January would have dismantled the program. If the rumors about the Trump administration’s dismantling of DACA are true, Congress would have six months to act to protect current DACA recipients.
The DACA program, announced by the Obama administration in 2012, has provided relief to nearly 790,000 young unauthorized immigrants, according to the latest data released by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
KJ