The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that the White House is moving forward on plans to expand deportation relief through executive action to roughly 5 million immigrants of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The plans could offer immigrants temporary legal status, similar to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Officials told the paper that there are two options being considered:
One option would allow immigrants who are parents of U.S. citizens to apply for temporary legal status which would let them work legally in the U.S. Because children born in the country automatically receive U.S. citizenship, that option could affect about 5 million people, researchers estimate.
A second option would be to allow temporary legal status for the parents of young people already granted deportation deferrals by the Obama administration. That would affect a smaller, but still sizable, number of people.
White House senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer said at an event Friday that executive action on immigration will happen at the end of the summer.
