Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday that the Trump Administration has decided to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a program established under President Barack Obama that protects some undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.
DACA, which some Republicans argue is an overreach of executive power, has kept nearly 800,000 immigrants from deportation since its implementation in 2012.
Following Sessions’ announcement from the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., the White House released a statement from President Donald Trump, in which he accused President Obama of ” making an end-run around Congress and violating the core tenets that sustain our Republic.”
Read his full statement below.
As President, my highest duty is to defend the American people and the Constitution of the United States of America. At the same time, I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents. But we must also recognize that we are nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.
The legislative branch, not the executive branch, writes these laws – this is the bedrock of our Constitutional system, which I took a solemn oath to preserve, protect, and defend.
In June of 2012, President Obama bypassed Congress to give work permits, social security numbers, and federal benefits to approximately 800,000 illegal immigrants currently between the ages of 15 and 36. The typical recipients of this executive amnesty, known as DACA, are in their twenties. Legislation offering these same benefits had been introduced in Congress on numerous occasions and rejected each time.
In referencing the idea of creating new immigration rules unilaterally, President Obama admitted that “I can’t just do these things by myself” – and yet that is exactly what he did, making an end-run around Congress and violating the core tenets that sustain our Republic.
Officials from 10 States are suing over the program, requiring my Administration to make a decision regarding its legality. The Attorney General of the United States, the Attorneys General of many states, and virtually all other top legal experts have advised that the program is unlawful and unconstitutional and cannot be successfully defended in court.
There can be no path to principled immigration reform if the executive branch is able to rewrite or nullify federal laws at will.
The temporary implementation of DACA by the Obama Administration, after Congress repeatedly rejected this amnesty-first approach,…
