Ryan says no decision on DACA; refutes report that he’ll attach Dreamers to spending bill

Washington Times

By Stephen Dinan

October 26, 2017

Ryan says no decision on DACA; refutes report that he’ll attach Dreamers to spending bill

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Thursday that he hasn’t promised a solution to a replacement for the Obama-era DACA program as part of the year-end spending bill, pushing back on reports he’d said a legalization for Dreamers would be part of the must-pass bill.

Immigrant-rights groups had seized on the report earlier this week to say they saw momentum, but Mr. Ryan said nothing’s changed, and said the report was wrong.

He said Republicans have a task force working on a bill that would create legal status for Dreamers as well as stiffen enforcement to head off a future wave of illegal immigration.

“No decision has been made about the timing and nature of DACA, how it will be structured and when it would occur,” Mr. Ryan said at his weekly press briefing.

President Trump has called for a six-month phaseout of DACA, the Obama-era deportation amnesty that’s protecting about 700,000 Dreamers from deportation. All current two-year permits will remain valid until their expiration, and those whose permits expire before March 5 were allowed to re-apply, but no new applicants are being accepted and no renewals beyond the March 5 cutoff are allowed.

The administration said the alternative to the phaseout was to have a judge declare the program illegal and cut it off immediately.

Immigrant-rights groups said Mr. Trump should have fought the case out anyway, and say they want to see a permanent solution from Congress by the end of this year.

Some Democrats have backed those demands, saying they won’t vote for the year-end spending bill unless it has full protections for Dreamers. But those Democrats have rejected Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Ryan’s call to couple a DACA fix with stiffer immigration enforcement both on the border and in the interior of the U.S.

Mr. Trump earlier this month released a 70-point wish-list of enforcement actions he said he would like to see attached to any solution for Dreamers.

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