Lawmakers call for 'dreamer' fix

Trump plan adds to urgency

WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers and advocates on both sides began to stake out positions Monday for an extended public debate over whether Congress should provide legal status to young illegal immigrants known as "dreamers," as President Donald Trump prepares to rescind President Barack Obama's protections for them.

Moderate congressional Republicans, and even some conservatives, suggested that they are open to crafting a legislative deal that could offer permanent legal status to hundreds of thousands of people who have been in the country illegally since they were children. Democrats lambasted Trump for his expected decision and called on the GOP to join them to protect the dreamers.

Urgency on Capitol Hill has mounted amid reports that Trump will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed nearly 800,000 people to live and work in the United States without fear of deportation.

Trump, who is to announce his decision today, is leaning toward terminating the program but delaying enforcement for six months to give lawmakers time to find a solution, according to people briefed on the White House's deliberations.

[PRESIDENT TRUMP: Timeline, appointments, executive orders + guide to actions in first 200 days]

Trump faces a deadline today from Texas and several other states, including Arkansas, that have vowed to sue the administration over the program if the president does not terminate it.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has suggested that the Justice Department would not be able to defend the program's constitutionality in court and has lobbied Trump to end it. Other top advisers, including Chief of Staff John Kelly, have pushed him to maintain the program until lawmakers act.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has been involved in previous bipartisan immigration overhaul efforts, said he would support Trump's plan to end the program after a six-month delay. In a statement, Graham said the program amounted to "presidential overreach" by Obama, who created it by executive action in 2012.

Graham added that he empathizes with the dreamers who "know no country other than America. If President Trump makes this decision, we will work to find a legislative solution to their dilemma."

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., agreed, saying that it should be up to Congress, not the White House, to set immigration policy.

"We must confront the nation's out-of-date immigration policy and finally resolve the issues of strong border enforcement and merit immigration," he said. "It is right for there to be consequences for those who intentionally entered this country illegally. However, we as Americans do not hold children legally accountable for the actions of their parents."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Trump is poised to "break the hearts and offend the morals of all who believe in justice and human dignity." She called on Republicans to pursue legislation to protect dreamers "from the senseless cruelty of deportation and shield families from separation and heartbreak."

The president and his senior advisers continued to deliberate Monday afternoon, and aides cautioned that Trump could still change his mind ahead of the announcement. Important details such as whether the administration would continue to accept applications and issue renewals for two-year work permits during the six-month delay remained unresolved.

DREAMERS PROTEST

Young immigrants shielded from deportation by the program were battling to keep those protections Monday while preparing for the worst. They held protests nationwide and had plans to do it again today.

Some worry they will have to work under the table in lower-wage jobs, while others hope to persevere or even start their own businesses.

Korina Iribe said she and her partner have been discussing what they need to do to protect their 2-year-old son in the event that they are no longer shielded from deportation or cannot work. Both were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

"Our son is U.S.-born, and ultimately for us, we want the best for him. But we also don't want to go back to living in the shadows," said Iribe, who's from the Phoenix area.

Supporters of the program took to the streets Monday in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, South Carolina and elsewhere, holding up signs that read, "No person has the right to rain on your dreams" and "You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one."

Iribe and her partner are making sure one of her son's grandparents has power of attorney in case they are deported without notice. She is getting her son dual citizenship so he could join them in Mexico if needed.

Abril Gallardo, 27, has used the work permit she got through the program to get a job as a communications director for a Phoenix advocacy group. That's allowed her to pay for college so far, although a move that cuts off her ability to work legally would threaten that.

If she can't work anymore, Gallardo said, she plans on helping with her mom's catering business and hopes to start their own family restaurant one day.

"The most important thing is that we're safe together and we're there for each other," Gallardo said.

Education leaders also called on Trump to preserve the program. The Migration Policy Institute estimated that of the nearly 1.2 million people eligible for the program in 2014, 365,000 were in middle or high school and 241,000 were in college.

Some educators have said that Trump's immigration policies and rhetoric have created additional stress for such students or for children whose parents are illegal aliens. Some schools have worked to ease the stress and have emphasized that schoolhouses are generally off-limits for immigration enforcement.

But ending the program would create uncertainty for hundreds of thousands of students, ratcheting up stress in the classrooms and lecture halls, many educators say. They fear that some students may stop showing up to school altogether.

"A lot of these kids might start going into hiding," said Robert Runcie, superintendent of Broward County Public Schools in Florida. "There's going to be a lot of fear and uncertainty for young people."

CONGRESS' EFFORTS

Legislation to legalize the dreamers has been lingering in Congress for years, with a handful of bills pending in the House and Senate.

The one that has received the most attention, introduced by Graham and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., would grant permanent legal status to more than 1 million young people who arrived in the United States before they turned 18, passed security checks and met other criteria, including enrolling in college, joining the military or finding jobs.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., also plans to introduce a measure to shield the young immigrants from deportation for five years if they work, pursue higher education or serve in the military.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and other GOP leaders have not laid out a new legislative path, including whether the dreamers' future would be addressed in isolation or be coupled with proposals to increase border security and tighten immigration controls.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., suggested that he would be open to giving the dreamers legal permanent residence provided that any deal also include his legislative proposal, called the Raise Act, which would slash legal immigration levels by half over a decade.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Cotton emphasized that he thinks the new class of green-card holders represented by the dreamers must be offset with cuts elsewhere.

"We should find a way to give [them] legal status," he said, "but we also have to mitigate the inevitable consequences of that action."

Such package deals were quickly dismissed by immigration hawks and immigrant advocates Monday.

"Why would you have to make a bargain with the rule of law?" asked Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who has vehemently opposed legal status for illegal aliens. "These are bright lines we're talking about."

Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, an immigrant-rights organization, said advocates are still pressing the White House to maintain Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and that they hold out hope that Trump will protect the program.

However, if the president moves to unwind it, Sharry said, advocates think they will have the upper hand in a legislative fight, given polls that show broad public support for allowing dreamers to stay in the country.

A trade of the dreamers for tougher immigration restrictions or border wall funding "would not even pass the laugh test," Sharry said.

Information for this article was contributed by David Nakamura, Ed O'Keefe, Maria Sacchetti, Sean Sullivan, David Weigel and Moriah Balingit of The Washington Post; by Margaret Talev, Toluse Olorunnipa, Anna Edgerton, Jennifer Jacobs and Justin Sink of Bloomberg News; and by Astrid Galvan, John Raby, Jill Colvin, Catherine Lucey and Erica Werner of The Associated Press.

A Section on 09/05/2017

Upcoming Events