President Trump revealed yesterday that he will be signing an executive order that will grant a “road to citizenship” for DACA recipients. The President made the remarks in an interview with Spanish-language network Telemundo.
“The deal was done. DACA is going to be just fine. We’re putting it in. It’s going to be just fine. And I am going to be, over the next few weeks, signing an immigration bill that a lot of people don’t know about. You have breaking news, but I’m signing a big immigration bill,” said Trump.
“It’s going to be a very big bill, a very good bill, and merit-based bill and it will include DACA, and I think people are going to be very happy,” said Trump, adding “But one of the aspects of the bill is going to be DACA. We’re going to have a road to citizenship.”
The Deferred Action on Childhood Arrival program allowed young children brought to the country illegally to be shielded from deportation as long as they fulfilled employment and other legal requirements. It was created by an executive order issued by President Obama back in 2012. President Trump rescinded that order with one of his own in September 2017. Several lawsuits were thenbrought against the administration challenging Mr. Trump’s authority to do that.
The Supreme Court last month found for the plaintives in those cases, saying Mr. Trump did not have the authority to rescind the program through an executive order. But they found only that the Trump administration did not adequately justify the termination of the program, in what amounted to a judgement based on procedure. That finding, not on the merits of the case, allowed the Trump administration to repeat terminating the program if it so chose.
The Trump administration previously indicated that they would end the program, saying it would be ended within 6 months from the time of the decision.
It’s unclear what the President’s calculation was for the reversal.
lol!
Y’all screamed at me weeks ago when I confirmed @EmeraldRobinson’s reporting on this plan.
Amnesty Don is doing exactly what we said he was going to do. https://t.co/UXqx8euWhq pic.twitter.com/eV1177UqT4
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) July 10, 2020
The move does will likely not curry any additional favor with left-leaning voters who are dead-set against his reelection but may alienate base voters for whom immigration is their number one issue. It’s also unclear what or how much influence the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, long an advocate for immigration reform and amnesty, had on the President’s decision.