New York Daily News
By Chris Sommerfeldt
March 05, 2018
The deadline that has kept thousands of undocumented immigrants in limbo for months quietly arrived Monday without action or consequence.
President Trump threw about 800,000 immigrants into uncertain territory in September when he rescinded the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protected people brought to the country illegally as children from deportation.
But Trump pledged that he would show compassion for the so-called Dreamers and punted the issue over to Congress, arbitrarily setting a March 5 deadline for lawmakers to come up with a solution.
However, negotiations stalled after Trump refused to sign a bipartisan DACA bill in January, complaining that it didn’t include tax dollars for his long-promised border wall and wouldn’t overhaul other immigration laws. Nonetheless, Trump blamed Democrats for DACA inaction, charging that they “are doing nothing” about the issue.
Supreme Court rejects federal bid to speed up DACA lawsuit
DACA dropped even lower on the congressional docket as lawmakers shifted focus to the country’s gun laws in light of a string of mass shootings.
Then, the Supreme Court removed any sense of immediacy on the issue as it ruled on Feb. 26 that DACA had to be reinstated while lower courts took up challenges to Trump’s rollback.
Finally, March 5 arrived and nothing happened. The White House has stayed mum on the issue for weeks and an administration spokesman did not return a request for comment from the Daily News Monday.
The Supreme Court ruling hints that the issue won’t be resolved any time soon, leaving Dreamers in continued legal limbo.
Trump who rejected bipartisan deals claims Dems have dropped DACA
Donald Trump in the White House
Juan Escalante, who immigrated to the U.S. from Caracas, Venezuela when he was 11, has benefitted from the DACA program since it was introduced via executive order by President Barack Obama in 2012.
“This is politics at its worst,” Escalante, now 28, told the Daily News on Monday, blasting Trump and Congress for “playing with the lives of 800,000 people, including myself.”
Escalante, the communications director of immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, said that while Trump’s deadline might seem superficially meaningless, its passing could lead to some very real consequences.
Deportations of undocumented immigrants have spiked under the Trump administration, and Escalante feared that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency might interpret the deadline as an incentive to ramp up their efforts further.
“You may or may not see an uptick in Dreamer deportation,” he said. “The fact that we still don’t have protections and we keep going into overtime and overtime and overtime — who knows what’s going to happen? It’s really tragic.”
An overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of granting DACA recipients permanent status, according to multiple polls. Many believe that the Dreamers should not be punished as long as they meet certain requirements, such as paying taxes and going to school.
Democrats have maintained that they will not put up votes for an immigration bill that doesn’t include permanent protections for the Dreamers.
On the other side, Trump and hardline Republicans have insisted that they will not move on any measure that doesn’t overhaul so-called chain migration, a term used by conservatives that refers to the process by which some immigrants are able to bring family members into the U.S.
The President has also demanded that Congress earmarks tax dollars for a border wall with Mexico.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who coauthored a bipartisan DACA bill over the summer, took a scathing shot at Trump as the deadline loomed.
“This debate was never about a wall, it was about rejecting the notion that we are a nation of immigrants,” Durbin tweeted late Sunday.
Trump pumped out a series of tweets Monday morning — but none addressed the unceremonious passing of his DACA deadline.
Instead, he focused on Canada and Mexico, blaming the nations for supposedly hurting American producers and funneling drugs into the country.
“Canada must treat our farmers much better. Highly restrictive,” Trump tweeted. “Mexico must do much more on stopping drugs from pouring into the U.S. They have not done what needs to be done. Millions of people addicted and dying.”
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