President Donald Trump, who launched his campaign with a forceful attack on immigrants, is now the man responsible for catapulting immigration reform back into contention.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday that the administration would rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an Obama-era executive action that protected from deportation about 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children — people known as “Dreamers,” after the failed 2010 DREAM Act.
Immigration advocates blasted the decision as a moral failing on the part of the Trump administration. But they also acknowledged on Tuesday that Trump provided a renewed political opening none of them had expected from a man who barnstormed the presidency by referring to Mexican immigrants as drug dealers, criminals and rapists.
Chances of passing a new DREAM Act remain a long shot, and some Republicans in Congress said Tuesday that they were skeptical that any stand-alone bill granting legal status to Dreamers could pass. White House officials said they hoped to use the impetus to win concessions on a border wall and other priorities.
But despite major hurdles ahead, immigration activists said, Trump has single-handedly revived chances for the DREAM Act, if not for something larger.
Read the full story from POLITICO: “Trump’s DACA move resuscitates immigration reform left for dead”
