Immigration hawks are getting antsy about whether President Trump is going to rescind a program giving work permits to illegal immigrants.
While it is still very early in the Trump administration, the federal government has continued to process and accept applications and renewals under the program, which was begun by President Obama through a controversial executive action.
On average, several hundred illegal immigrants will receive new or renewed permits each day until the program is terminated.
In his major immigration speech delivered in Phoenix in August, Trump vowed, “We will immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties, in which he defied federal law and the Constitution to give amnesty to approximately 5 million illegal immigrants.” The fact that it hasn’t gone away yet has some growing nervous.
“What I did not expect was for Trump to break an explicit promise regarding his headline issue on the administration’s first business day in office,” wrote Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “But that may be what’s happened.”
The larger of the two programs, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, was blocked by the courts. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, affecting some 750,000 who arrived illegally as minors, remains in effect.
Breitbart, the generally pro-Trump conservative news site that was formerly run by the president’s top strategist Stephen Bannon, ran a story headlined: “Critics: Trump’s deputies break his cheap-labor immigration promise on day one.”
The story describes the inaction as a “violation of one of Trump’s most prominent campaign promises.”
Supporters of the DACA program had also been bracing for Trump to take action as early as Monday. “DACA kids will in the very near future, in a matter of weeks, be apprehended as part of these sweeps of unexecuted orders of removal,” a former Obama administration official warned the Sacramento Bee.
The fact that nothing has been done yet doesn’t necessarily mean Trump has changed his policy in this area since winning the election. But other conservative actions have already received reassurance on their priorities with swift executive orders related to Obamacare, abortion and the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines.
Immigration hawks are troubled less because of the substance of DACA — many, though not all, of them favor some kind of legislative remedy for those covered by the program — than what it signals about the Trump administration’s direction on the issue more generally.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday that illegal immigrants protected by DACA weren’t going to be the Trump administration’s top enforcement priority. “The focus is going to be on people who have done harm to our country,” he said.
“First and foremost, the president’s been very, very clear that we need to direct agencies to focus on those who are in this country illegally and have a record — a criminal record or pose a threat to the American people,” Spicer said. “That’s where the priorities are going to be and then we’re going to continue to work through the entire number of folks that are here illegally. But right now the clear focus is on that.”
There is near-universal consensus that the removal of illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes should be the top priority. The debate is over how much resources to devote to people with lesser criminal records or removing people for immigration violations alone.
Some immigration hawks worry that at a minimum the Trump administration is giving up a bargaining chip that will help it win support for its other immigration priorities, such as the border wall and a mandatory system screening illegal immigrants from employment.
Others express concern that members of the Trump administration and the Republican congressional leadership who are more sympathetic to Gang of Eight-style comprehensive immigration reform are gaining influence.
“It’s not happening,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said when asked about the creation of a “deportation force” at a televised town hall this month. “I’m here to tell you, in Congress, it’s not happening.”
“What we have to do is figure out how to have a humane solution to his very legitimate, sincere problem, and respect the rule of law,” Ryan said.
Trump himself gave mixed signals when describing his approach on “Fox and Friends.”
“It’s a plan that’s going to be very firm, but it’s going to have a lot of heart,” he said. The president said of DACA beneficiaries, “I think they’re going to end up being very happy.”
