WASHINGTON — Young people currently shielded from deportation and allowed to work legally under the federal program for those brought into the country illegally as children will begin losing their protection in March unless Congress acts before then, the Trump administration announced Tuesday.
In the meantime, the administration will continue to renew two-year work permits as they expire but will stop accepting new applications for the program.
The decision allows President Donald Trump to say that he is fulfilling a campaign pledge to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Barack Obama established in 2012, while also attempting to shift responsibility to Congress for the effect on the nearly 800,000 people covered by the program.
Trump emphasized that effort in an early-morning tweet: “Congress, get ready to do your job — DACA!”
Under the administration’s plan, several thousand people a week would begin losing their legal right to work in the U.S. as of March 6. But because current permits will be renewed until then, the program would not be fully phased out until March 2020.
DACA shields the so-called Dreamers — a politically attractive group for whom Trump in recent months often has expressed sympathy, despite his campaign vow.
“I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents,” Trump said in a statement released by the White House on Monday, after he had Attorney General Jeff Sessions announce the halting of the program on live television from the Justice Department.
“We must also recognize that we are a nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws,” Trump said, adding that he wanted “a gradual process” to “provide a window of opportunity for Congress to finally act.”
Trump notably left it to Sessions to make the announcement, and had not scheduled any major public appearances Tuesday.
Tossing the issue to Congress could create a serious split among Republican lawmakers. Many Republican leaders, including Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, have said they favor a measure to give permanent legal status to the Dreamers. But many rank-and-file Republicans oppose the idea, which is why past measures failed in Congress, prompting Obama to issue his executive order in 2012.
In a statement, Ryan called Obama’s order perhaps “well-intentioned” but “a clear abuse of executive authority,” and said, “It is my hope that the House and Senate, with the president’s leadership, will be able to find consensus on a permanent legislative solution that includes ensuring that those who have done nothing wrong can still contribute as a valued part of this great country.”
Sessions said that Obama’s action in creating the program went beyond his legal authority, and the Department of Homeland Security “should begin an orderly and lawful wind down.”
Obama’s DACA order was an “unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch,” said Sessions, who has been one of the administration’s leading opponents of the program and a vocal critic of immigration generally going back through his prior years in the Senate.
“The Department of Justice cannot defend this overreach” in court, he added. Several Republican state attorneys general have threatened to challenge the program in court if the Trump administration did not take action to dismantle DACA by Tuesday.
“We cannot admit everyone who would like to come here,” Sessions added. “The nation must set and enforce a limit on how many immigrants we accept each year, and that means all cannot be accepted.”
Obama, in a rare critique of his successor, strongly disputed Sessions’ reasoning in a statement on his Facebook page. He wrote that his administration relied “on the well-established legal principle of prosecutorial discretion, deployed by Democratic and Republican presidents alike.”
He did so, Obama wrote, after Congress ignored his pleas for a legislative solution to shield the so-called Dreamers from deportation — “because it made no sense to expel talented, driven, patriotic young people from the only country they know solely because of the actions of their parents.”
Trump’s action “isn’t required legally. It’s a political decision, and a moral question,” Obama said, adding: “Ultimately, this is about basic decency. This is about whether we are a people who kick hopeful young strivers out of America, or whether we treat them the way we’d want our own kids to be treated.”
