Trump’s Cowardly Dodge on DACA
The administration again demonstrates that the rule of law is a non-concern
By Cristian Farias
Unlike his predecessor in office, who looked Dreamers in the eye when he decided to grant them a temporary reprieve from deportation, Donald Trump wouldn’t dare tell them publicly he’d be ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, their only lifeline in the only country most of them have ever known — he left that job to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. For the last five years, the program has offered these young Americans-in-the-making a shot at a dream many of us take for granted.
Without much of a moral compass to guide him, the president instead ducked responsibility for the needless suffering he’d be causing Dreamers by deferring to Congress, which since 2001 has tried and failed to pass legislation to shield these young immigrants — who never had the intent to violate the law — from a legal regime that otherwise treats them as deportable aliens that don’t belong here. Does anyone really believe that Trump, who rode into office by attempting to appease a nationalist base, will sign a codified version of DACA that would give more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants a chance of joining the polity?
