It was less than a month ago, but it may as well have been in another lifetime for all the attention it’s getting.
President-elect Donald Trump expressed support for avoiding deportation of young immigrants in the threatened program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and other so-called “Dreamers.”
His Dec. 8 comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press” quickly faded into the background as a high-decibel immigration debate raged over other familiar issues:
- Tech giant and Trump ally Elon Musk’s argued for an expansion the H1B visa program for foreign skilled workers, triggering a feud with other Trump supporters who want to further limit or do away with the program.
- Incoming “border czar” Tom Homan said undocumented parents will be deported with or without their U.S.-born children. It will be up to the parents whether to take the children — who are U.S. citizens — with them, he said. That’s an offshoot of Trump’s larger proposal for mass deportations.
- Trump insists he will seek to end birthright citizenship for those born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents, despite big legal hurdles.
DACA, however, has something those and other volatile immigration initiatives don’t have: common political ground. In Congress and, according to polls, across the country, DACA has broad bipartisan support — as it has for years.
Yet as before, the prospect for action sparing DACA recipients — who were brought into the country illegally as children — from deportation hardly seems bright.
For one thing, on multiple occasions, Trump has suggested coming up with a plan to save DACA, while at the same time taking executive and legal action to do away with the program during his first administration. At various times, both Democrats and Republicans balked at other components of complex immigration deals that were being discussed, leaving DACA in limbo.
So there’s a sense of déjà vu in Trump’s latest take on DACA. The facts and political dynamics haven’t changed much over the years.
Still, it’s important to keep DACA’s plight high in the public consciousness. It’s a successful program both economically and socially — and it’s easy to forget this effort has been around for a long time.
In 2012, then-President Barack Obama took executive action to create DACA to give legal protection to certain undocumented children. Obama cited the failure of Congress to pass legislation to protect Dreamers, which was first introduced nearly a quarter-century ago.
DACA now covers more than 500,000 people, many of whom are a long way from childhood, as Trump pointed out.
“We have to do something about the Dreamers because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age,” Trump said on “Meet the Press. “And many of these are middle-aged people now. They don’t even speak the language of their country.”
DACA is on borrowed time. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard arguments in October of an appeal of a lower court ruling that found Obama overstepped his authority, maintaining the program requires congressional authorization. The matter is expected to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
A Supreme Court ruling against Trump in 2020 kept the program alive temporarily. DACA recipients must renew their standing every two years, but the program for now cannot accept new applicants.
Trump’s renewed interest in helping Dreamers was received more with caution than enthusiasm by DACA supporters on both sides of the aisle in Congress.
“We’ll see. The sweet spot on immigration reform has eluded us a number of times. But obviously if there is a bipartisan willingness to take on that issue, then I’m certainly open to what we can do,” said incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who sponsored the original Dream Act in 2001, said he was “listening closely” to Trump’s comments.
“My ears perked up. After 23 years, I’m ready,” he said, according to NBC News, but added the record of failed attempts to address Dreamers gives him “reason to be skeptical, if not cynical.”
There has never appeared to be much interest in standalone legislation to fix DACA, and opposition to such things as a pathway to citizenship (among some Republicans) and tougher enforcement measures (among some Democrats) have scuttled efforts at more comprehensive approaches for years.
It’s hard to imagine that changing, but the big players aren’t giving up all hope, at least not publicly.
However, even if Trump and congressional Republicans come to terms with Democrats on DACA, there will be resistance from opponents on the right and, importantly, from leaders in Republican states.
The case pending at the federal appeals court was filed by Texas and eight other states. They say they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on health care, education and other services for immigrants in the country illegally.
In the nationwide picture, undocumented immigrants are deemed an economic plus, according to various analyses. In 2022, for example, undocumented immigrants paid some $96.7 billion in federal, state and local taxes — the majority of which went to the federal government, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
The Center for American Progress projected the U.S. economy would lose $460.3 billion over a decade if DACA is rescinded. More than 90 percent of DACA recipients were employed in 2023, according to a center survey.
Thus, warnings from economists and businesses have been dire that mass deportations would cause widespread hardship across the country.
There’s a lot of uncertainty about what exactly Trump will do and what its impact will be.
In a commentary published earlier this month by The San Diego Union-Tribune, Alan Bersin, former U.S. attorney in San Diego and border czar under Obama, advised people to “be prepared to respond to the choices that are made and the values asserted” by Trump.
“Watch what Donald Trump’s government does, not what he says,” Bersin wrote.
