Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said President Trump is willing to extend the March 5 deadline for ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in order to give Congress more time to respond to his plans to rescind it.
“The president’s comment to me was that, ‘We put a six-month deadline out there. Let’s work it out. If we can’t get it worked out in six months, we’ll give it some more time, but we’ve got to get this worked out legislatively,’ ” Lankford told a Washington Post reporter following a town hall late Thursday.
Lankford said Trump reassured him in a recent conversation that he was willing to give “Dreamers” “some more time.”
Lankford’s spokesman, D.J. Jordan, said Trump told the senator about this approach during a phone call last month.
On Sept. 5, the Justice Department announced the winding down of DACA. As of Oct. 6, the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency stopped accepting renewal applications from recipients. But Trump has hinted that this deadline could be flexible, and has encouraged Congress to find some way to legislate a DACA-style program.
Currently, 690,000 people in the U.S. are protected under DACA.
