They’re known as DREAMers, about 800,000 people who were brought to the United States as children by their undocumented immigrant parents.
Today, President Donald Trump ordered the end to the Obama administration program that would have prevented them from being deported, a decision AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders calls “grossly unfair and morally reprehensible.”
The Obama-era program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA, will end on March 5, 2018, unless Congress acts to replace it.
Trump has struggled with the DREAMers, whom he sympathetically called “these incredible kids,” despite declaring during his presidential campaign that he would end DACA.
After campaigning on a pledge to get tough on undocumented individuals, this reversal seeks to satisfy his base even if it means deporting thousands of innocent children of immigrants who’ve grown up in the United States if DACA isn’t restored by Congress in some fashion.
“It is urgent that Congress act to protect the young adults covered by the DACA program, and finally get serious about comprehensive bipartisan immigration reform,” Saunders said in response to Trump’s action today. “It is on Congress to prove to Americans of every race and creed that our government keeps its promises, and rejects hate and xenophobia.”
Read the full statement here.