According to reports last week, it looks as though President Trump may be planning to cancel former President Obama’s executive order that created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which grants work visas to 886,000 illegal immigrants and protects them from deportation. Trump had railed hard against DACA during his campaign for the presidency, and promised to end it if he were elected.
Since reports of Trump planning to end DACA have spread, there has been an overwhelming backlash against Trump (as usual) from those on the left. In a gross overestimation of their power over his policy-making ability, the organizers of the Women’s March tweeted the following message to President Trump last Thursday:
Dear @realDonaldTrump,
If you end DACA, we will make your life impossible.
Signed,
The 5 million who marched on January 21st#DefendDACA— Women's March (@womensmarch) August 31, 2017
To be eligible for DACA, illegal immigrants must have been brought to the U.S. before the age of 18. This may seem like a humane policy, but it breaks down when you realize that DACA recipients don’t even have to prove it.
“You simply assert that that’s when you came in,” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said during an MSNBC appearance Friday.
Clearly, there are many loopholes in this immigration program. Trump, as a candidate, promised to fix these loopholes and that was supposed to begin by ending DACA. Now, his supporters are left waiting to see if he will follow through on his rhetoric now that he actually has the power to do so.
“We will immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties in which he defied federal law and the Constitution to give amnesty to approximately 5 million illegal immigrants,” Trump said at one of his campaign rallies last year.
Although it seems as though the decision to repeal has already been made, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that the President had not yet made a decision, and that he still plans on treating Dreamers with “great heart.”
Reports say that President Trump should make an official decision later in the week.
