President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 5 that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would be phased out. This Obama-era program gave temporary resident status, including permits to work and study, to individuals between the ages of 12 and 35 who came to the United States as minors without documents. Nearly 800,000 people have applied for the program, for which participants pay a fee and renew every two years.
DACA is popular with the American public, given that 95 percent of DACA participants have no criminal record, work, study, have enlisted in the armed forces, and are active and productive members of their communities. Moreover, their contribution to the U.S. economy is an estimated $283 billion.
Why would Trump target a program as successful as DACA? Why would he terminate a program that he himself promised would be safe under his presidency? What can Congress do to save it?
Why End DACA?
Trump moved to terminate the program for several reasons. First, he faced pressure from key constituencies that did not approve of President Obama’s executive order to allow a de facto, albeit temporary, legalization of the undocumented individuals covered by DACA. This constituency comprises the core of Trump’s supporters in a rapidly shrinking political base. It is for this core base that Trump is now fulfilling the promise he made as a candidate to “immediately terminate” DACA. Second, Trump also faced pressure from far-right Republican lawmakers and state officials, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who believe that DACA was a presidential overreach. These immigration hardliners have argued that it is up to Congress to change U.S. immigration laws, and that the president should not bypass Congress to change such laws by executive order. Third, Trump could get a much-needed legislative victory by holding this well-regarded program hostage for the votes needed to pass his favored legislation, such as funding for a border wall.
Can Congress Save DACA?
Congressional supporters of DACA have been driven into a corner and will have to act. They can count the votes carefully to see if they have the numbers needed to send the president a veto-proof bill that will save the program as it stands. If the votes are not there, which is likely, legislators will have to decide what to give the president in exchange for sparing nearly 800,000 individuals from deportation.
The signs are not encouraging for a resurrection of DACA. First, reaching a consensus on almost anything in Congress has been, and is, very difficult these days. Not even a Republican-controlled Congress has been able to act on much. Second, any kind of contested legislation favored by Trump that is attached to a DACA bill will reduce the number of votes for the program or its replacement. If the contested legislation comes in the form of funding for a border wall, for instance, many Democrats could drop out. If it comes in the form of cutting legal migration by half, many legislators on both sides will drop out. All of this signals that Congress will not be able to save DACA and that the program has essentially ended. It will then be up to Trump to determine — by executive order, ironically — whether these youths, about whom the government is completely informed, should be targeted for deportation or can remain in the U.S.
Is DACA Worth Saving?
DACA is the result of congressional inaction. However questionable Obama’s approach, the program was his attempt to resolve the immigration issue piecemeal (insofar as he believed he could). Congress considered a similar (but broader) bill in August 2001 that would grant legal status to individuals who entered the U.S. as minors without documents. This legislation — the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM Act — has failed to pass despite numerous introductions, but it is a path to resolution that has already been laid out.
It is disappointing that Trump would hold DACA hostage to his other legislative priorities, but the program deserves to be saved. If Congress acts, it should go beyond DACA. It should replace the program with the DREAM Act, which must be considered independently. This is an opportunity for Congress to show that it can lead on an issue that has very little political cost. Legislators should send a clean, veto-proof bill to the president. Attaching a bill on the legalization of 800,000 young, productive and even patriotic youth to an unrelated piece of legislation favored by Trump is likely to poison its chances of passing, and the president will have succeeded only in abolishing a program that was actually working.
Tony Payan, Ph.D., is the Françoise and Edward Djerejian Fellow for Mexico Studies and director of the Mexico Center at Rice University’s Baker Institute.