Trump Wants Cabinet Team Before Targeting Obama Amnesty
Trump Wants Cabinet Team Before Targeting Obama Amnesty
January 24, 2017
The administration of President Donald Trump indicated Tuesday it would prefer to wait for Cabinet-level posts in immigration related agencies to be confirmed before it revokes two executive amnesty programs signed by former President Obama.
Responding to a question from LifeZette at the daily White House press briefing, Sean Spicer, President Trump’s press secretary, said Trump first and foremost wants to see Immigration and Customs Enforcement focus on deportations of criminal aliens, and enforcement along the border itself.
“With respect to DACA, I think [Trump] is considering to make sure his Cabinet-level team starts to organize and plan to move forward [on DACA].”
Spicer, after sidestepping questions on Monday why Trump hadn’t issued immediate executive orders to reverse the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) programs, the administration needs its full team in place to move forward with a plan.
“With respect to DACA, I think [Trump] is considering to make sure his Cabinet-level team starts to organize and plan to move forward,” said Spicer.
A plan would likely take time, as former Marine Gen. John F. Kelly was only sworn in as Homeland Security secretary on Friday and the confirmation of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) as Attorney General was again delayed by Democrats Tuesday.
The Trump team could also elect to only take action on DACA. DAPA has already been blocked by a Texas court as unconstitutional.
It's also possible Trump is negotiating a deal with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), who has indicated he feels for the plight of children brought here illegally by their parents.
"If you’re worried about some deportation force knocking on your door this year, don’t worry about that," Ryan told an undocumented person at a CNN town hall earlier this month.
But as Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies notes, reversing course on DACA and DAPA would simply stop renewals of old cases, and would stop new applications.
And it wouldn't even take an executive order.
"U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which handles the two-year, renewable amnesty program, could easily have been instructed to suspend processing of DACA applications – both for renewals and first-time applicants – until further notice," Krikorian wrote late Monday in National Review.
Krikorian, a longtime critic of illegal immigration and even loose legal immigration policies, said unless some form of action is taken, every business day that goes by under a Trump administration will allow 800 new undocumented immigrants to sign up for DACA.
Calling for immigration reform and even promising to end DACA were gold-plated Trump promises, ones that revved up an excited portion of his base, and likely helped turn out supporters in key states such as Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Kirkorian, who supports some form of solution for children who were brought here by illegal alien parents, said to negotiate with Congress first requires Trump and Kelly to end the executive program initiated under President Obama in 2012.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump called DACA and DAPA unconstitutional, and the label still stands on his website.
Trump promised to "immediately terminate President Obama's two illegal executive amnesty actions. All immigration laws will be enforced -- we will triple the number of ICE agents."
Much of the confusion, then, could be what the definition of "immediately" is.
Still, immigration-policy critics such as Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said there is a great need for clarity from the new administration.
http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/t...obama-amnesty/
