Multiple news sources are reporting that President Trump will announce his decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive action implemented under former President Obama on Tuesday.
Obama is expected to make comments via social media if Trump follows through and ends DACA.
According to Politico, Obama plans to challenge Trump’s decision if the president ends DACA.
Obama’s current plan is to post a statement on Facebook and link to it on Twitter, where the former president has more than 94 million followers. In his final presidential press availability, he suggested that he would speak out if Trump went after the Dreamers — and that it was one of the few issues where he would feel morally compelled to do so. He said he would not remain silent in the face of “efforts to round up kids who have grown up here and for all practical purposes are American kids, and send them someplace else, when they love this country.”
DACA allows individuals that illegally entered the country as children to remain and work in the U.S.
Obama’s June 2012 DACA decision reversed an earlier statement where he said as president he did not have the authority to make changes to immigration laws.
USA Today reported on Obama’s 2011 statement:
“Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own,” Obama told members of a National Council of La Raza conference who shouted back, “Yes, you can! Yes, you can!”
“That’s not how our democracy functions,” Obama responded. “That’s not how our Constitution is written.”
It’s expected that Trump, who campaigned against DACA, will end the program after six months which gives Congress a chance to address the issue through the legislative branch.
Another story in Politico provided details on the White House debate over DACA:
Trump has wrestled for months with whether to do away with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA. But conversations with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who argued that Congress — rather than the executive branch — is responsible for writing immigration law, helped persuade the president to terminate the program and kick the issue to Congress, the two sources said.
Critical comments by Obama about Trump ending DACA will ignite a national debate on what to do with the estimated 800,000 individuals that fall under the former president’s executive action.
By re-entering into the political debate and further politicizing DACA, Obama will likely make it harder for Congress to resolve the issue.
