Trump Moves to End DACA and Calls on Congress to Act

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to the Obama-era executive action that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation, calling the program an “amnesty-first approach” and urging Congress to replace it with legislation before it begins phasing out on March 5, 2018.

“I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents,” Mr. Trump said in a written statement. “But we must also recognize that we are nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.”

The statement was released shortly after Mr. Trump, who had called the issue a personal dilemma, dispatched his attorney general to announce that the government will no longer accept new applications from undocumented immigrants to shield them from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA.

Administration officials said the roughly 800,000 current beneficiaries of the program — brought to the United States illegally as children — will not be immediately affected by what they called an “orderly wind down” of former President Barack Obama’s policy.

“Only by the reliable enforcement of immigration law can we produce safe communities, a robust middle class, and economic fairness for all Americans,” Mr. Trump said, calling the DACA program an “amnesty-first approach.”

“Before we ask what is fair to illegal immigrants, we must also ask what is fair to American families, students, taxpayers, and jobseekers,” the president added.

Earlier on Tuesday, it was Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an immigration hard-liner who has helped shape Mr. Trump’s views, who publicly announced the move, in essence shifting responsibility for the immigration issue to lawmakers.

“The program known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama administration is being rescinded,” Mr. Sessions told reporters, adding that “The policy was implemented unilaterally, to great controversy and legal concern.”

Mr. Sessions called the Obama-era policy an “open-ended circumvention of immigration laws” and an unconstitutional use of executive authority. “The executive branch through DACA deliberately sought to achieve what the legislative branch specifically refused to authorize on multiple occasions,” he said.

He also used the aggrieved language of anti-immigrant activists who argue that undocumented people are lawbreakers who hurt native-born Americans by usurping their jobs and pushing down wages.

“The effect of this unilateral executive amnesty, among other things, contributed to a surge of minors at the southern border with humanitarian consequences,” Mr. Sessions said. “It denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs.”

Elaine Duke, the acting Homeland Security secretary, said in a statement that Mr. Trump chose to “wind the program down in an orderly fashion that protects beneficiaries in the near-term while working with Congress to pass legislation.”

The announcement was an effort by Mr. Trump to honor his campaign pledge to end Mr. Obama’s immigration policy, while avoiding an immediate termination of protections and work permits for the so-called “dreamers,” many of whom have lived in the United States since they were small children.

“We are people of compassion, and we are people of law, but there is nothing compassionate about the failure to enforce immigration law,” Mr. Sessions said.

Referring to Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to immediately terminate DACA, Mr. Sessions said Tuesday’s action was what “the president promised to do,” adding that Mr. Trump “has delivered to the American people.”

The announcement formally started the clock on revoking legal status from those protected under the five-year-old program.

Mr. Obama created the DACA program as a way of protecting young, undocumented immigrants from deportation after Republicans in Congress repeatedly blocked passage of a legislation to accomplish that goal. The policy allowed about 800,000 young adults who were brought to the United States illegally as children to work legally in the United States and remain in the country without the fear of immediate deportation.

Officials said some of the current immigrants already receiving protection under the Obama-era plan will be able to renew their two-year period of legal status until October 5. But the announcement means that if Congress fails to act, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children could face deportation as early as March to countries where many of them have never lived.

“Congress now has the opportunity to advance responsible immigration reform that puts American jobs and American security first,” Mr. Trump said in his statement, calling for the enactment of legislation that would slash legal immigration levels by prioritizing the admittance of people who speak English and have advanced skills.

The president said he wanted to “resolve the DACA issue with heart and compassion – but through the lawful democratic process – while at the same time ensuring that any immigration reform we adopt provides enduring benefits for the American citizens we were elected to serve. We must also have heart and compassion for unemployed, struggling, and forgotten Americans.”

Immigration officials said that they do not intend to actively target the young immigrants as priorities for deportation, though without the program’s protection, the immigrants are considered subject to removal from the United States and would no longer be able to work legally.

Homeland Security officials said no specific guidance would be issued to agents to shield the young undocumented immigrants from deportation. It would be up to Congress to extend such protection, they said.

Congress, get ready to do your job - DACA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2017

Still, the president was conflicted until the end about how to address the plight of dreamers, waffling repeatedly in recent days about how to phase out the program.

As late as one hour before the decision was to be announced, administration officials privately expressed concern that Mr. Trump might not fully grasp the details of the steps he was about to take, and when he discovered their full impact, would change his mind, according to a person familiar with their thinking who spoke on condition of anonymity without authorization to comment on it.

Mr. Trump’s action is certain to be met with condemnation from immigration advocacy groups, who have characterized it as a coldhearted move that would yield no benefit to the nation while endangering nearly a million young people raised in the United States who are seeking to work and pay taxes.

One such group, United We Dream, tweeted back at Mr. Trump Tuesday morning, urging him not to take action against DACA.

No Donald - you don't get to wash your hands. You have the power to keep DACA until Congress passes clean bill #defendDACA https://t.co/qtAInQ2cgd

— United We Dream (@UNITEDWEDREAM) September 5, 2017

The president’s move is also likely to be greeted with skepticism and frustration by many of his most conservative supporters, who had expected that Mr. Trump would put a permanent end to what they view as an illegal abuse of executive authority by Mr. Obama to grant amnesty to undocumented immigrants.

And it is unclear whether the Republican-controlled Congress will be willing to pass legislative protections for the young, undocumented immigrants. Republicans have repeatedly blocked similar legislation from passage for more than a decade.

Speaker Paul D. Ryan recently suggested that he believes Congress should handle the issue, saying that “this is something that Congress has to fix.”

But more conservative members of Mr. Ryan’s caucus are certain to oppose such moves, supported by loud, anti-immigrant hawks who dominate talk radio and conservative news programs.

Even in the bitter immigration debates of the past decade, children who were illegally brought to the United States at young ages by their parents, and who graduated from high school or sought to enter the military, have held a sympathetic place in the conversation.

They were branded as Dreamers for their inspiring personal stories and regarded by members of both parties as deserving of a special status. Opinion polls have found the public overwhelmingly supports granting them some form of legal standing that allows them to stay and work in the country where they were raised.

Mr. Trump, who made his hard-line immigration stance a calling card of his presidential campaign, savaged Mr. Obama for taking executive action in 2012 to protect Dreamers, calling his action unconstitutional and illegal, and vowing to immediately terminate the program if he won the White House.

But Mr. Obama made a personal appeal to his successor about the program and said it was one of the few initiatives he would speak out to defend after leaving office. And after being sworn in, Mr. Trump began to equivocate, musing aloud about the fate of “these incredible kids,” and promising to deal with them with “great heart” even as his core supporters complained that he was betraying an important campaign promise.

In recent weeks, his dilemma has grown more dramatic, after 10 state attorneys general wrote to Mr. Sessions, threatening to mount a legal challenge to DACA unless the administration phased out the program by Sept. 5. In a recent meeting at the White House, Mr. Sessions informed Mr. Trump he would not defend what he considered an unconstitutional order in court, according to people familiar with the conversation, and numerous officials at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security made the case to the president that his administration would look foolish if it argued in favor of preserving it.

In June, the administration ended a similar program Mr. Obama created in 2014 to expand eligibility for DACA and give legal status to as many as five million parents of citizens and legal permanent residents. That order was blocked by a legal challenge by the State of Texas, and the Supreme Court announced last year that it had deadlocked on the case, 4 to 4.

The attorneys general said if Mr. Trump did not take similar action to terminate DACA, they would amend the Texas lawsuit to include it and work to have a court overturn the program along with the other two.

As rumors about Mr. Trump’s impending move to end DACA ran rampant in recent days, advocacy groups and progressive activists agitated strongly against the decision, warning that it would be particularly divisive in the wake of the racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Va., last month.