On Tuesday, Trump and his administration announced that he would begin to unravel an immigrant program from Obama’s presidency called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). DACA was a policy implemented in June of 2012 that called for deferred action for certain young individuals who immigrated to the United States as children. The program allowed undocumented immigrants to live and work in the U.S. on a temporary basis.
When making this announcement at the Justice Department, Attorney Jeff Sessions said that Obama, who put the program into effect only five years ago, “sought to achieve specifically what the legislative branch refused to do.”
He labeled it, “an open-ended circumvention of immigration law through unconstitutional authority by the executive branch” and stated that it was unlikely the program would withstand court scrutiny.
However, the fates of immigrants are still very much shrouded in mystery since there’s a six-month window of opportunity for Congress to save the 300,000 immigrants that would be affected in 2018, and 320,000 more in 2019.
“It is my hope that the House and Senate, with the president’s leadership, will be able to find consensus on a permanent legislative solution that includes ensuring that those who have done nothing wrong can still contribute as a valued part of this great country,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Should the DACA program be razed, more than 1,000 stand to lose their work permits every single day, according to a study made by the Center of American Progress. Many businesses, such as Apple, Google and Facebook, as well as many celebrities, have lobbied the White House not to terminate the program.
Okay. The Bad Man continues to do bad.
Your move, Congress.#DefendDREAMers #DREAMAct #LetsGo— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) September 5, 2017
Nearly 1 million young immigrant #DREAMers will be at risk of deportation if @realDonaldTrump ends #DACA. We demand #DefendDACA! #HereToStay
— Shailene Woodley (@shailenewoodley) August 29, 2017
https://twitter.com/HereIsGina/status/904751920086040576
.@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/kPWOUWhlWF
— Lauren Jauregui (@LaurenJauregui) September 4, 2017
