House Speaker Paul Ryan suggested Thursday the GOP would avoid a mass deportation of so-called Dreamers who arrived illegally in the United States as children and have been allowed to remain under an Obama administration executive action.
Ryan said the House Judiciary Committee is working with the Trump transition team on what to do about the Dreamers, “so that we don’t have any kind of ugly disruption that anyone is concerned about.”
Ryan’s remarks follow a Time magazine report in which Trump, named “Person of the Year,” pledged to “work something out” with this bloc of illegal immigrants, who number in the hundreds of thousands.
Currently, Dreamers are avoiding deportation thanks to an executive action put into place by President Obama, but also, many charge, because the Obama administration has dragged its feet on deporting this group of people.
Some want Trump to reverse Obama’s action and deport them, but even many Republicans believe such a move would be deemed too harsh, especially in cases where the immigrants arrived here as very young children and have no connection to their birth country.
“We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud,” Trump told the magazine. “They got brought here at a very young age, they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Ryan said he would personally prefer “something that balances the concerns of all parties involved and makes sure we don’t pull the rug out from under people.”
An immediate move to allow Dreamers to remain in the country is likely to anger conservatives, who are eager to stop the inflow of illegal immigrants they say has proliferated under the Obama administration.
On CNN Thursday morning, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, one of the staunchest advocates of deportation, said he hopes Trump will reverse Obama’s executive order on Dreamers and then consider each deportation “on a case by case basis.” King said the GOP should not do anything to permanently allow any illegal immigrant group to stay until it first addresses securing the borders.
King said the law makes it illegal for Dreamers to be in the country, even if they arrived as young children.
If Trump wants to change it, King said, “he needs to come to Congress and ask us to change the law. But I don’t think you get that ask unless you first enforce the law and demonstrate you’ve secured the border.”
