Trump and Sessions to End DACA

Will hundreds of thousands of young immigrants, brought illegally to the United States as minors by their families, suddenly be at risk for deportation? That’s what hangs in the balance with the Trump administration’s expected announcement that he will fulfill a campaign promise and rollback the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The 2015 DACA executive order from President Obama was designed to circumvent Congress on this peculiar gap in immigration law—many of these accidental illegal aliens know only the United States, but couldn’t apply for legal status. It led more than 700,000 people to provide their information in exchange for “deferred action” on green cards and the ability receive work permits.

But for many Republicans, DACA was a usurpation of legislative authority that gave de facto amnesty to these young people and, because of the regime of chain migration, to their families. As a candidate, Donald Trump pledged to end what he called “one of the most unconstitutional actions ever undertaken by a president."

Tuesday’s announcement of the DACA rollback will come not from President Trump and the White House but from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is likely to announce a six-month window before its implementation. According to Eliana Johnson of Politico, who first reported the new policy, it was Sessions who helped convince Trump to end the program. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times saysSessions told Trump the Justice Department would not defend DACA.

Sessions and his former aide Stephen Miller (now a top White House aide) are in the driver’s seat on the new policy, the Times reports. That’s a better sign than any that come March 2018, those illegal immigrants registered under DACA could start getting deported. But chief of staff John Kelly, until recently the secretary of Homeland Security, is among those in the West Wing looking for a way to solve the problem legislatively.