On the campaign trail, Donald Trump claimed that he would cancel President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows young unauthorized immigrants—known as “Dreamers”—to live temporarily without fear of removal and work legally. To many people’s surprise (including mine), President Trump decided in January to maintain the program, issue renewals, and even allow new applicants into the program. But this will likely change soon.
Now several states led by Texas are attempting to force the president’s hand, requesting in a letter that he terminate the program by September 5 or face a lawsuit. Texas already successfully challenged President Obama’s 2014 attempt to expand DACA to a broader range of immigrants who came here as children and to create a new program for undocumented parents of U.S. citizens called DAPA. This makes a lawsuit very likely to succeed. Even if it were possible for the Trump administration to defend DACA legally, it is not clear that Attorney General Jeff Sessions would want to defend a policy that he has called constitutionally “very questionable.” In July, he refused to say he would defend it.
After the election, President Trump promised to “work something out” with the Dreamers, and in July, President Trump said that he alone will decide the future of DACA. But the politics just became much more difficult. Texas has essentially forced him to defend in court something that he had characterized as illegal amnesty on the campaign trail and something his biggest supporters hate. Moreover, Trump’s record with the courts is already making him appear inept, so he would likely not want to take the political hits when he could easily lose the case anyway.
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