MONROE, Ga. -- President Donald Trump said he was giving Congress six months to come up with a solution for young immigrants who came to the United States as children and are living in the country illegally.
But in some Republican congressional districts, there's little incentive for fixing a program started by the Obama administration.
Trump's decision to wipe out deportation reprieves for young immigrants has unleashed a frenzied rush to renew 154,000 permits before an Oct. 5 deadline, a process advocacy groups say will cost millions of dollars in fees and stretch their resources to the limit.
In Mexico, the prospect of their return is forcing a closer look at how the country receives U.S. deportees.
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Across Mexico, the news of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program's cancellation for many has cut to the quick. President Enrique Pena Nieto said, "Mexico will receive these young people who return with open arms." The Foreign Ministry issued a statement expressing "profound regret" at DACA's cancellation.
Critics say Mexico is not prepared to receive any such deportees and has had a poor track record with deportees in general. "Mexico continues to be not ready," said Nancy Landa, a deportee in Tijuana whose firm, Mundo Translated, conducts research on immigration issues. "You still see that there's not enough help, not enough resources, not enough support in the whole return process."
Tijuana, one of the main "repatriation" points on the U.S. border, has been receiving an average of 85 deportees a day through July of this year -- compared with an average of 106 a day last year, according to Mexican government figures. After Trump's announcement on DACA, Tijuana's Coalition for the Defense of Migrants has raised pointed questions about the ability of local, state and federal authorities in Mexico to assist these new arrivals.
"Are you ready to provide the necessary support?" the group asked in a written statement. "What support programs are you contemplating? Is there a plan? Is there a public policy in this regard?"
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Last Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it is canceling the Obama-era program. While neither a path to U.S. citizenship nor to permanent resident status, the DACA program since 2012 has allowed participants to study, work and live in the United States without fear of deportation. With that protection being lifted, Congress has been given six months to find a solution.
The conservative voters who dominate many GOP districts profess varying degrees of sympathy for the immigrants affected by Obama's program and then Trump's reversal. But these voters also are convinced that illegal immigration is a drag on Americans' economic opportunity, and they want the GOP-controlled Congress to stand with a president they see as defending U.S. workers and the rule of law.
That means members of Congress have little incentive to risk angering core supporters with any legislation that can be branded as "amnesty."
Anthony Pham immigrated to the United States in 1982 from Vietnam and became a citizen five years later, after President Ronald Reagan signed an immigration law that sped the legalization process for millions of new Americans.
Now a business owner and proud Republican in Georgia's staunchly conservative 10th Congressional District, Pham says he supports maintaining legal status for young immigrants living in the United States illegally who were brought to the country as children.
"When they come here as children, they can become American citizens if they are good, not bad people," Pham says of the 800,000 or so immigrants affected by Trump's decision.
But Pham says that what Congress does -- or doesn't do -- won't change his support for the president or his congressman, outspoken conservative Jody Hice.
"I am Republican. I am with Mr. Trump," Pham says, sitting in the courthouse square barbershop he's owned in Walton County since 1993.
Pham's view echoes across Republican congressional districts like Georgia's 10th, a wide expanse of small towns between Atlanta and Augusta. And it highlights the political conundrum facing deeply divided Republicans whom Trump has called on to craft some kind of legislative solution, giving them an election-year deadline.
Fellow Republican Troy Trantham, 77, says immigrants are "getting the mine" while American workers "are getting the shaft." That's a biting version of a common argument here that immigrants, particularly those in the country illegally, get public benefits without paying taxes.
At the least, 73-year-old Frank Young says, "they're taking American jobs."
Hice won election in 2014 in part as an immigration hard-liner appealing to voters such as Trantham and Young, who are representative of the older, whiter electorates that dominate midterm elections, particularly in GOP-leaning districts.
Hice's aides say he's open to negotiation on the immigrant program and that he doesn't want to see a mass deportation of its beneficiaries. But his campaign website still blasts "amnesty" and argues that illegal immigration "drives up the cost of education, health care, police and judicial services and social services."
Since Trump's decision last week to end the Obama program, Hice has signed on to two Republican immigration proposals. But those deal mostly with the process employers use to check the legal status of job applicants and do not explicitly address the plight of the young immigrants.
There are Republicans in the Georgia district favoring a legislative solution, including one who wants to challenge Hice next year.
"There needs to be a fix so these kids don't have to look around the corner for an [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agent every time they try to contribute to society," says Joe Hunt, an executive with a restaurant franchising business in Athens.
The local economic development chief, Shane Short, said he has "no personal opinion on DACA," but he described the economy as "booming," saying he's managing proposed business deals totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars in Walton County alone.
The total immigrant population in the district is small, with the Census Bureau measuring the foreign-born population at 5.4 percent, well below the national figure nearing 13 percent. That's even though the district's leading industry, agriculture, relies on considerable immigrant labor.
Hunt, Hice's prospective primary opponent, said those realities pale in districts such as the Georgia 10th partly because they are drawn to conservatives' advantage. So the representatives "sit around and take no action because they are afraid of getting hammered for amnesty."
Indeed, the 10th is a district weighted to conservatives.
Athens-Clarke County, home to the University of Georgia, once anchored a competitive congressional district that elected moderate Democrats. But Republicans divided Athens-Clarke into separate districts, diluting the influence of its liberal Democrats and moderate Republicans.
Trump won Hice's district with 61 percent of the vote in November, while Hice ran unopposed.
"It ought to take Congress 10 days to fix this, but this Congress couldn't do it in 10 years," Hunt said.
Hice's and Trump's most enthusiastic backers explain that they aren't opposed to all immigrants.
"It's just not an easy answer, if they came here when they were 6 years old, or even babies," said Gene Briscoe, an 82-year-old retiree in Monroe who voted for Trump.
John Bramblett, 74, says he worked with many immigrants in the construction business and knows the local agriculture concerns depend on them as well.
And they both say they know local immigrants-turned-citizens, citing Pham and the families that run popular restaurants in town.
"They're good people," Briscoe said. After a pause, he adds, "They came legally."
Information for this article was contributed by Bill Barrow of The Associated Press; and Sandra Dibble of Tribune News Service.
A Section on 09/11/2017