House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is calling on President Barack Obama to deport more young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children, known as Dreamers.
Issa and 32 House Republican colleagues sent a letter to the president, dated July 2, urging him to reverse his 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to halt deportation of people who would be eligible for the stalled DREAM Act. They blamed Obama’s “failed policies” for the recent influx of unaccompanied minors into the U.S., mostly from Central America.
“First, we call on you to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program created, without congressional support, by your Administration in June, 2012,” the Republicans wrote. “While the current program only applies to arrivals prior to 2007, the very existence of the program contradicts present law and violates the Constitutional principle of a separation of powers which grants primary law making authority to Congress.”
Issa and his colleagues said Obama “must make an explicit public commitment that you will not support legislation that extends legal status to newly arriving illegal aliens no matter the age.”
They also called on him to abandon his review of deportation policies aimed at finding ways to ease up on unauthorized immigrants who don’t pose a security threat, saying he should make it clear that he’ll provide “no special treatment for any illegal alien.”
The letter comes two days after Obama announced that Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told him immigration legislation won’t come up in the House this year, and so he’ll explore legal options to act administratively to fix the problems with the system.
Read the letter below, provided by Issa’s office.
