iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is set to announce a decision on whether he’ll end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Friday. While it’s unclear what decision the president will ultimately make, he did speak briefly on the matter.
“We love DREAMers. We love everybody,” he said on Friday.
Vice President Mike Pence, in an exclusive interview with Jon Karl said, “President Trump has said all along that he’s giving very careful consideration to that issue, and that when he makes it he’ll make it with, as he likes to say, big heart.”
During his presidential campaign, Trump vowed to end the program, calling it “illegal,” and he’s under tremendous pressure from immigration hardliners, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Here’s what you need to know about the program:
What is DACA?
DACA was started by President Obama in 2012 to allow certain undocumented immigrants who were children when they were brought to the U.S. to apply for deferred action and be eligible for work permits.
The Act was implemented as an Obama-era executive action, but can be as easily undone with the stroke of the presidential pen.
How will happen if DACA is nixed?
One of the big questions if Trump halts the program is what will happen to the nearly 800,000 so-called DREAMers who came out of the shadows and registered with the government after the program was introduced. As of July 31, 2017, there were 794,846 initial grants since the inception of the program.
It remains to be seen whether these individuals would be turned over to immigration enforcement and be targeted for deportation. Current policy allows U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to share information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if it receives an application for someone who has committed a felony crime, or has an outstanding warrant.
Another looming question is what would happen to the work permits. One of the big perks of DACA was that it allowed individuals to obtain a legal work permit. Those permits normally last 2-3 years, and the question would be whether those are now void immediately, or if they will be phased out.
Why would Trump act to get rid of the program now?
A group of 10 state attorney generals, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, imposed a deadline on the president of September 5. In a letter, Paxton wrote that if the administration doesn’t end DACA by that time, he will amend the complaint in the case against the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) — a lawsuit Texas fought and won — to include DACA. This would put the administration in the position of defending the program.
Immigration advocates call the September 5 deadline politically motivated. Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center said that if Paxton files that amendment by midnight on Sept. 5, the next steps would be laid out by the judge. There is no date set as to when the administration would need to respond.
What has Trump said about the program?
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to end DACA.
“We will immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties in which he defied federal law and the Constitution,” he said at an immigration policy speech in Phoenix during his campaign on August 21, 2016.
Once elected, however, his tone on the matter tempered. In his interview with ABC News’ David Muir in January he reassured DACA recipients.
“They shouldn’t be very worried,” he said. “They are here illegally. They shouldn’t be very worried. I do have a big heart. We’re going to take care of everybody.”
Who is fighting to save DACA?
Apple’s Tim Cook, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and hundreds of entrepreneurs and business leaders from across the country released an open letter calling on Trump to preserve DACA. They’re also pushing Congress to pass legislation to help DACA recipients. The letter and current signatory list can be found here.
Meanwhile, a group of 20 Democratic attorneys general from across the country signed a letter calling on the Trump administration to uphold DACA as a counter to Paxton and the nine other attorneys general planning to fight it. A group of more than 1,800 leaders, including mayors and governors, signed their own letter of support.
Obama also vowed in his last news conference at the White House on January 18 that if DACA recipients were threatened, he would consider that a time when “our core values may be at stake. The notion that we would just arbitrarily, or because of politics, punish those kids when they didn’t do anything wrong themselves, I think that would merit me speaking out,” Obama said at the time.
Immigration advocates already have a march and rally planned for Tuesday afternoon outside the White House.
What are Trump’s options?
The president could do nothing, and let the matter be decided in the courts. He could also terminate the program, or choose to phase it out. When DACA recipients’ work permits expire after two years, they would not be eligible for renewal. Immigration advocates estimate that under this scenario, each day 1,400 residents would lose their DACA status, their work permits, their jobs, and potentially be vulnerable to deportation.
The final possibility would be Congressional action. In July, a bipartisan bill was introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that would grant legal status to many DREAMers. While some conservatives may still oppose the measure, Congressional action would remove the objections of presidential over-reach pertaining to DACA.
Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida, and Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., introduced a companion bill in the House, which also gives many of those now covered under DACA a pathway to citizenship.
Copyright © 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.