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A draft executive order would make DREAMers vulnerable to deportation

It would be the most brazen Trump administration move yet.

DREAMer arrested
DREAMer arrested
Mark Abramson/the Washington Post via Getty

At least three times in the past two weeks, a rumor has spread quietly but insistently through immigrant networks and advocacy groups: It’s happening. Very soon, possibly tomorrow: He’s going to end DACA.

No one hearing these rumors needs the acronym spelled out for them: The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, has been a focal point of the immigrant rights community since President Obama launched it in 2012, and the 750,000 unauthorized immigrants who’ve been “DACAmented” under it — protected from deportation and allowed to work legally — are just as high-profile.

The immigrant rights community already has plenty to worry about, and it’s already on the defensive. Executive orders signed last week increased the use of detention and made millions of unauthorized immigrants “priorities” for deportation.

But for months, the biggest unanswered question has been what’s going to happen to DACA and to the immigrants who benefit from it.

The fate of DACA is what has people holding their breath, so tightly wound that the slightest rumor sends huge ripples — making it hard, sometimes, to tell when you’re hearing a different rumor about the president deciding to end the program “soon” or the same rumor you heard three days ago.

Revoking DACA — making hundreds of thousands of well-integrated, politically sympathetic immigrants vulnerable to deportation — would be the strongest indication that Trump’s White House is committed to making life harder and deportation easier for even the most “terrific” unauthorized immigrants. And that appears to be on the table.

Last week, Vox obtained a draft of an executive order that would sunset the program by preventing current DACA recipients from being able to renew their protections, gradually making hundreds of immigrants vulnerable to deportation each day over the course of two years.

Negotiations over the fate of DACA appear to be ongoing. Trump said last week that something would be announced in the next four weeks, and reports from advocates and members of Congress indicate that the White House hasn’t yet made up its mind.

But the Trump advisers who have proved most influential with the president so far — Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, who were behind the executive orders signed last week, along with attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions — want DACA demolished. And fear of political backlash, so far, hasn’t done anything to stop them from getting their way.

Related

The draft executive order leaked to Vox would end DACA within two years

Per the draft order leaked to Vox last week, work permits and deportation protections already issued under the program would remain valid after the order was signed. However, by design these permits are all already set to expire at some point in the next two years, and once they expire, they could not be renewed. That means that starting very soon, a trickle of immigrants would start to lose their DACA protections — and by January 2019, barring a policy reversal or an act of Congress, all of them would. In the meantime, due to another provision in the draft executive order, DACA recipients would immediately lose their ability to travel outside the US.

It’s difficult to determine when the first DACA recipients would lose their status after such an order is signed. Some immigrants were able to apply for and receive two-year renewals very recently, which would make them some of the last to expire, not first. The Department of Homeland Security continued to process DACA applications and renewals after Trump was inaugurated.

At least some of the 121,543 immigrants who got two-year DACA grants in January through March 2015 would likely lose their protections in the next six weeks. Most of the 152,899 immigrants who got two-year protections between April and June 2015 would probably lose DACA this spring: as many as 1,680 a day.

After their DACA grants expired, immigrants would lose their ability to work in the US legally — meaning their employers would have to either fire them or break the law themselves by paying them under the table. In some states, their drivers’ licenses could become invalid. And at all times, they would be vulnerable to deportation.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said in his confirmation hearing that he probably would not allow immigration agents to use information from DACA applications to track down immigrants, though a provision in an executive order Trump signed Wednesday might make it easier for that to happen. His words are no guarantee.

Last week, the Trump administration declared in an executive order that any unauthorized immigrants who had been charged with any criminal offense, or had done anything that would render them chargeable, would become a “priority” for deportation. For DACA recipients who lose their status, that would include things like continuing to drive without a license or continuing to work without the proper documents, things that most other unauthorized immigrants (including many DACA recipients’ parents) do every day.

Ending DACA would provoke outrage — but that doesn’t appear to be dissuading the administration

What distinguishes ending DACA from other immigration proposals that the Trump administration has signed or is reportedly considering is that many members of the president’s own party are cautious about it. Reports indicate that the White House is continuing to negotiate over what to do about DACA and when — which means the draft executive order obtained by Vox may not be the order the president ultimately signs.

The reason ending DACA is such a touchy subject is that DACA recipients are people whom many Americans — even those who are generally opposed to allowing unauthorized immigrants to get “amnesty” — want in the country. They are people who have lived in the US for years and gone to school here; thanks to DACA, they are working, buying homes and cars, getting higher degrees. They are integrated into their communities.

Ending DACA wouldn’t result in their automatic deportation, but it would make it possible — and it would force them to return to the caution, anxiety, and barriers to achievement that have plagued a generation of immigrants who’ve grown up in America but not fully of it.

That kind of disruption, and the political backlash that would ensue, worries many Republicans. But it doesn’t appear to worry the Trump advisers who have led the way on immigration policy so far — who designed a “shock and awe” strategy of pushing aggressive executive orders in the first days of the presidency, with the intention of showing America that when it came to cracking down on immigration, President Trump meant business.

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