Former President Barack Obama plans to speak out if President Trump announces his intent to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Trump on Tuesday is expected to declare he will end DACA, a program Obama created unilaterally that protects certain immigrants who were brought illegally to the U.S. as children and gives them work permits.
The president will delay the termination of DACA for six months, according to multiple reports, to give Congress time to devise a legislative solution to protect the 800,000 or so illegal immigrants who benefit from the program.
Obama said before he left office he would carefully pick his spots about when to publicly oppose Trump’s initiatives, and that ending DACA would qualify.
“The notion that we would just arbitrarily or because of politics punish those kids, when they didn’t do anything wrong themselves, I think would be something that would merit me speaking out,” he said at the Jan. 18 news conference.
If Trump ends DACA as expected, Obama plans to post a statement on Facebook and link to it on Twitter, Politico reported Monday.
