Report: Trump Likely to ‘Pull the Plug’ on Immigration Program Protecting Up to One Million People

‘I Love Kids’ Trump Said in February. ‘We’re Going to Show Great Heart’ to DACA Enrollees

Recognizing that there are about 1.7 million people in the U.S. who are undocumented but had been brought into the country through no fault of their own when they were under the age of 16, President Barack Obama in 2012 instituted a program to protect them from deportation. DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, requires participants to register with the federal government and have demonstrated good behavior.

Also known as DREAMERS, many have been granted work permits and granted deportation relief for two years, which can be renewed.

Part of the goal is to keep families together, and part of the goal is to keep good students who can contribute to society in the country – why let all that talent leave?

Estimates vary, but there are between three-quarters of a million and up to one million current DACA enrollees.

President Donald Trump had all but promised they would be safe under his administration.

“I love kids,” Trump said in February, just weeks after being sworn in. He promised to deal with DACA enrollees with “heart,” as the video below shows.

“We’re going to show great heart. DACA is a very, very difficult subject for me, I will tell you,” Trump told reporters. “To me, it’s one of the most difficult subjects I have. Because you have these incredible kids – in many cases, not in all cases. In some of the cases they’re having DACA and they’re gang members and they’re drug dealers too,” Trump said, in typical fashion.

“But you have some absolutely incredible kids,” he continued. “They were brought here in such a way, it’s a very, very tough subject.”

“The DACA situation is a very difficult thing for me, because I love these kids, I love kids, I have kids and grandkids and I find it very hard doing what the law says exactly to do and, you know, the law is rough.”

NBC News, citing reporters Pete Williams and Julia Ainsley is reporting that now, “President Trump appears likely to pull the plug on DACA, per several government officials.”

Their just-published report adds:

Administration officials said the Department of Homeland Security sent a recommendation to the White House earlier this week on what to do, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions discussed the program with senior officials Thursday at the White House. Sessions has been a consistent opponent of the program.

As many as 1 million immigrants could be affected.

That NBC News tweet was posted literally 10 seconds after MSNBC posted video of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying DACA is still under review, showing that the administration has literally no idea what it’s doing.

Here’s how the tweets were posted:

 

NBC News adds:

Civil rights groups warned that canceling DACA — “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” — would play into the hands of white supremacists. 

“It would be a grave moral and legal error,” said Vanita Gupta, director of the Leadership Conference on Human Rights and former head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division under Obama. 

“Killing the DACA program as the Trump administration’s first post-Charlottesville move would be absolutely shameful,” Gupta added. “We must not allow the hate violence that we saw on the streets of Charlottesville to become the guiding force for policy making.”

There’s still time to act:

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