Riverside County lawmakers react to President Trump’s decision to end DACA
Riverside County’s congressional representatives took opposing stands Tuesday on President Donald Trump’s decision to end an Obama-era program benefiting undocumented immigrants, which one congressman described as an act of cruelty and another defended as constitutionally sound.
“The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was an executive decision that’s now being reversed by executive authority,” according to a statement released by Rep. Duncan Hunter’s office. “In so doing, President Trump is aiming to keep families together and uphold his commitment to address the immigration issue in a way that’s consistent with his promises.”
Hunter, R-Temecula, was an early critic of DACA, telling City News Service in 2015 that the program sent “the wrong message to those who enter our country illegally,” serving as a potential “magnet that encourages further illegal immigration.”
Under DACA, an estimated 800,000 Central Americans have been admitted to the United States and granted waivers from deportation under terms established by former President Barack Obama in a 2012 executive order, which triggered lawsuits in 10 states over allegations that it unilaterally usurped Congress’s law-making power.
“President Trump’s decision to end the DACA program is a case study in cruelty and cowardice,” said Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside. “If the president believes … that law-abiding and productive young immigrants should not be thrown out of the country, then he should have stood by the DACA program. Instead, nearly one million young people will be forced to live in fear of the future because President Trump lives in fear of upsetting the extreme ideologues of his base.”
Takano said deporting the border-crossers shielded by DACA will likely have economic repercussions, with untold thousands of them integrated into the American labor force.
“Dreamers are our co-workers, classmates and neighbors,” the congressman said. “They have built their lives here. For many of these young people, America is the only country they have ever called home.”
Trump, who vowed during his presidential campaign last year to undo all of the Obama administration’s “executive amnesty” programs, said today that “work permits, Social Security numbers and federal benefits” were furnished to roughly “800,000 illegal immigrants between the ages of 15 and 36” because of DACA — despite Congress’s rejection of similar accommodations on multiple occasions.
His directive rescinding DACA provides for a six-month phase-out of the program, giving Congress time to consider legislation that may ultimately decide whether DACA recipients stay or go.
“The truth is that President Obama overstepped by excluding Congress from the decision-making process on DACA,” Hunter said. “President Trump is putting it back in the hands of Congress, where the discussion and
consideration should have been from the start.”
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called DACA an “open-ended circumvention of immigration laws” that defied constitutional principles.
“Societies where the rule of law is treasured are societies that tend to flourish and succeed,” he said. “Societies where the rule of law is subject to political whim and personal biases tend to become societies afflicted by corruption, poverty and human suffering. The American public has rejected an open borders policy.”
Sessions pointed out that an appellate court had iced Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents’ program — better known as DAPA — and said DACA would have eventually met the same fate.
Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert, said DACA reflects “the very core of our values as Americans” and shutting it down “threatens the future of hundreds of thousands of young people who have only ever known America as their home.”
“Rather than ending the DACA program and tearing families apart, we should instead work together towards comprehensive immigration reform that will secure our nation’s borders, keep our citizens safe and improve our immigration system to strengthen our economy and live up to our nation’s values of hope, opportunity and the American dream,” the congressman said.
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