Dems Say They’ll “Fight” Trump on DACA Decision

SCHUMER AND OTHERS TWEET THEIR REACTIONS

by Sharon Rondeau

(Sep. 5, 2017) — Following U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s press conference on Tuesday morning in which he announced that the DACA program is to be rescinded, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted that he and his fellow Democrats will “Do all we can to prevent @POTUS’ order from becoming reality.”

DACA was created by “executive action” on the part of former White House occupant, Barack Hussein Obama.  At that time, it was said by many to be unconstitutional.

However, some of those who protested it in the past, including now-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, urged President Donald Trump to maintain it last week until a legislative fix can be passed by Congress.

More than eight months since Trump took office, Congress has failed to pass tax reform or a repeal and/or replace of the health care law known as “Obamacare,” two items which Trump hoped to achieve early in his administration.

Also tweeting was Rep. Barbara Lee of California’s 13th congressional district, who opined that the revoking of the program “is cruel and heartless.”

Launched in August 2012 without congressional approval, DACA offered a reprieve from deportation for young people aged 31 and younger who were brought into the United States illegally when they were minors. If accepted in the program, participants were granted a work permit or approval to attend school and had to maintain a clean criminal record.

Some applicants with minor criminal records were accepted into the program, while others who committed serious crimes after acceptance into DACA were then targeted for deportation.

Current federal immigration law does not contain a provision for the protection of any illegal aliens from deportation. During Obama’s tenure in the White House, he showed particular preference to non-native-born individuals in the United States, whether they arrived legally or illegally, including additional executive actions issued on November 20, 2014 which were found by the courts to be unconstitutional.

Obama’s own Selective Service registration form and a long-form birth certificate image posted at whitehouse.gov in 2011 were found to be fraudulent by a five-year criminal investigation but never addressed by the FBI, Congress, or the Justice Department.

On August 25, the former sheriff who commissioned the investigation, 85-year-old Joseph M. Arpaio, received a pardon for a criminal conviction of contempt of court stemming from a case in which Arpaio was accused of racial profiling.  In 2012, Arpaio had characterized the reported forgery of Obama’s only publicly-proffered documentation as a “national security” concern.

In his declaration on Tuesday morning, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that his Justice Department is unable to defend the DACA program as constitutional and that failing to uphold the Constitution and its delegation of the lawmaking process to Congress ushers in domestic violence, crime, terrorism, and “national security” concerns.

Other congressional reactions to the DACA decision tweeted on Tuesday are:

Chicago’s Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, promised defiance of the rescinding of the executive action, referring to DACA participants by the oft-used term, “DREAMers:”