House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said Friday that President Donald Trump should not rescind former President Barack Obama’s “DACA” program, or “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.”
The protection from deportation granted to young people without criminal records, and who meet several other criteria, currently shields about 800,000 people from being kicked out of the country.
“I actually don’t think he should do that,” Ryan told Bremel, referring to murmurings that Trump would announce the end of DACA protections. “I believe that this is something that Congress has to fix.”
Ten Republican attorneys general have threatened to sue the federal government if Trump does not rescind DACA by Sept. 5.
Ryan joined a growing list of Republican legislators, including Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who have publicly announced their opposition to abandoning the program without a solution for DACA recipients.
Still, Ryan told WCLO’s Tim Bremel Friday that Congress should codify in law an alternative to what Obama achieved via an executive order to immigration agents.
“President Obama did not have the legislative authority to do what he did,” Ryan said. “You can’t, as an executive, write law out of thin air, and so that’s very, very clear and we’ve made that very clear.”
“Having said all of that, there are people who are in limbo,” he continued. “These are kids who know no other country, who were brought here by their parents and don’t know another home. And so I really do believe that there needs to be a legislative solution, that’s one that we’re working on. And I think we want to give people peace of mind.
Trump pledged on the campaign trail to repeal DACA. While he hasn’t done so yet, he has offered few assurances to DACA recipients that he will protect them from deportation. Instead, he has traded in platitudes, saying, for example, that his administration would “show great heart” toward DACA recipients.
“I’ve had plenty of conversations with the White House about this issue,” Ryan concluded Friday. “And I think the President as well has mentioned that he wants to have a humane solution to this problem, and I think thats something that we in Congress are working on and need to deliver on.”
Watch below via CAP Action, an advocacy group associated with the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank:
BREAKING: @SpeakerRyan asks Trump NOT to rescind #DACA. #DefendDACA pic.twitter.com/p29sxwafOI
— CAP Action (@CAPAction) September 1, 2017
