President Donald Trump's sympathy for those with protected immigration status through Barack Obama's controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) may be pushing him to reverse his campaign position to end the program.
Trump is "at war with himself" over his policy preference against amnesty for illegal immigrants and simultaneous sympathy for DACA recipients, Politico reported Wednesday. The White House staff is also divided on the program, with chief of staff John Kelly supporting it and policy advisers such as Stephen Miller telling the president to end it.
"I would be very uncomfortable saying where the president is leaning," a senior White House aide told Politico. "I don't have a clear sense of where he'll go."
This follows earlier reports that Trump would either end the program or let it expire, which would have been in line with the immigration hard line he took on the campaign trail but then partly reversed in January. Trump allowed so-called Dreamers to stay in the country when he came into office.
"I do have a big heart," he said. "We're going to take care of everybody."
DACA allows those who were brought to the U.S. at the age of 16 or younger by 2007, or overstayed their visas in the same timeframe, to have deferred status to live in the U.S. rather than return to their home country. The program affects about 800,000 people in the U.S.
Trump had differentiated himself in the Republican presidential primary by calling not just for a border wall, but also for an end to DACA and reduced levels of legal immigration. But his views on DACA recipients have become more personal, according to press reports. A top aide told Politico that Trump seems to view them as a "sympathetic or unusual case."
This sympathy for "Dreamers" was Obama's justification for his executive order that created the program, and he called on critics to "put yourself in their shoes."
"These are young people who study in our schools, they play in our neighborhoods, they're friends with our kids, they pledge allegiance to our flag," Obama said when he introduced the program in 2012. "They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper."
But many critics have not come around to Obama's reasoning, despite acknowledging the sympathetic nature of childhood arrivals.
"Having sympathy for people who were brought here as children is not at all inconsistent with the acknowledgment that the DACA program is just absurdly unconstitutional," said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors lower levels of immigration. "Those two things are not contradictory."
"We understand the hesitation, since many of the beneficiaries of this amnesty have sympathetic stories," the editors of National Review wrote Monday, "but as a matter of fidelity to our constitutional system and his campaign promises, Trump must end DACA."
Even some of DACA's supporters acknowledge the case against its legality in court, which may roll back the program regardless of what Trump decides to do. Ten states have called on the Trump administration to rescind DACA or else face a lawsuit, a process that sunk a previous expansion of immigration under Obama.
Kelly himself, while he was secretary of homeland security, told lawmakers that he did not expect DACA to survive a legal challenge. He did not commit the administration to defending the program in court after legal authorities told him DACA was "not legally sustainable."
Democrats and immigration advocates deny that the Obama-era program is not legally defendable, and they are putting public pressure on Trump to permit it to continue. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) tweeted that continuing the program should be non-negotiable.
It is reprehensible to treat children as bargaining chips. America’s DREAMers are not negotiable. #DefendDACA https://t.co/wErMfpWBlh
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) August 22, 2017
Those connected to the administration say it is difficult to predict what Trump will choose to do.
"It's kind of like Afghanistan, where you have a lot of different voices and the president needs to make a decision," someone close to the administration told Politico.