The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Ends DACA, Calls On Congress To Act

Episode Date: September 5, 2017

The Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, granted legal protections for roughly 800,000 people. It will expire in six months. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, congressional correspondent Susan Davis and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here to talk about President Trump's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. But not today, six months from now. Trump is effectively challenging Congress to decide what happens to the people the program protects, the roughly 800,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. All right. So Congress, get ready to do your job.

DACA. That was the cryptic tweet President Trump sent out this morning after a weekend of speculation about what Trump would do about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Trump is going to end it in March. Attorney General Jeff Sessions explained the decision in a Tuesday morning press conference. To have a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest, we cannot admit everyone who would like to come here. It's just that simple. That would be an open borders policy, and the American people have rightly rejected that. Therefore, the nation must set and enforce a limit on how many immigrants we admit each year,

and that means all cannot be accepted. This does not mean they are bad people or that our nation disrespects or demeans them in any way. It means we are properly enforcing our laws as Congress has passed them. Sessions spelled out the administration's position by saying DACA is, quote, an unconstitutional exercise of the authority of the executive branch. Sessions also claimed it resulted in a surge of minors on the southern border and denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans. We should say DACA is a program created by President Obama in 2012. It gives DREAMers, DACA recipients, protection from deportation, the ability to work, to go to school, to get a driver's license.

To be eligible, you have to have come to the U.S. before 2007 and been 15 years or younger at the time. There were other qualifications as well. You had to have a pretty spotless criminal record. About 800,000 young people have applied and been granted DACA status. A lot of things to go through here. First things first, Sue, how likely is it for Congress to act during the six-month window and pass something either on DACA or more broadly related to immigration reform? I think when we come to talk about this issue, we have to take a little bit of a step back and offer a little bit of the history in this to understand why doing this in the next six months is going to be so difficult. Immigration as a broader issue and

DACA or DREAMers in a specific issue has been unresolvable in Congress for the past 16 years. The first version of the DREAM Act was introduced in 2001, and that was then by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. He is still in the Senate today. It's been a roller coaster on this issue over the past 16 years. There has been attempts to pass the DREAM Act on several occasions, most recently in 2010, and it did pass the House under a Democratic majority. It failed in the Senate on a Democratic majority. It couldn't overcome a 60-vote filibuster, in part because five Democrats voted against it. So it has a very tortured history in Congress.

And now we are in a situation where Republicans control both chambers, there is tacit support for this or explicit support from this from Republican leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan, like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is a co-sponsor of a new version of the DREAM Act. The difficult part is Congress may well have the votes to pass this. There is bipartisan support for the DREAM Act in Congress. The challenge is, it is most likely going to have to be, if they do it as a standalone version of that bill, legislation that passes on the vast majority of Democratic support. And that is a really tricky political thing to do when Republicans are the party in power and the base of the Republican Party does not share as a progressive view on immigration policy as Democrats do.

And this is why you have Republicans warning that this is going to spark a civil war inside the party. And it also comes at a time where Sue just mentioned the business community. The business community is at odds with Donald Trump on other things. You had that kind of mass resignation from his various business advisory councils after his remarks about Charlottesville. I think DACA is the textbook definition of a wedge issue that Donald Trump has just presented to his own party because DACA has majority support with every part of the American electorate except the Republican Party. And that's the kind of hornet's nest that the president just punted this morning in that tweet that you just read. You know, time to do your job, Congress. DACA. He wants it off his plate, which I don't think is possible because I think it's pretty clear this was his decision, even if he had Jeff

Sessions announce it. And it's going to be very, very hard for Republicans to square the circle on this. When you read Paul Ryan's statement on this, it almost sounded like he wants to pass the DREAM Act. What jumped out to you from that statement? No fault of their own. These are, you know, he acknowledged that these are the most sympathetic immigrants in America today. Mara, why now? Well, today was the deadline where the state AGs were going to sue to challenge the constitutionality of DACA. And Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, had made it very clear that he wasn't going to defend DACA in court. So it was either going to be challenged and killed in court because nobody

was defending it, or they had to come up, as John Kelly has reportedly described, with an inelegant solution to an intractable problem. And this is what they came up with. So there's 800,000 people for whom this is not a theoretical political conversation. It's their life. Do we have a sense what happens to them during the next six months and what happens to them once that time is up if Congress doesn't act? Well, the process that the administration has devised for the next six months seems to me to be devised to avoid mass deportations. In other words, if you had a pending application received before today, it will still be reviewed. If your status expires six months from now, you'll have until the 5th of October to apply for renewal. So clearly, they're trying to make this as orderly and to avoid the prospect of mass deportations. After six months, theoretically, every one of these people would be, unless they've gotten an extension, would be subject to deportation. They've all given their personal

information to the government. The government knows exactly where to find them. However, in the statements that they've issued today, they've made it clear that they are still going to prioritize people who are criminals or lawbreakers. Clearly, DACA recipients aren't, otherwise they couldn't have gotten their waiver. So it's possible that in six months, if Congress doesn't do anything, there could be no deportations. So Trump is making a really interesting decision here, a decision that a lot of people are questioning. But this comes after a period of time where he's really played to both sides on this issue and changed where he seems to be

leaning. Let's listen for a moment. Here is Trump during the 2016 campaign, during a campaign where immigration was a hardline signature issue for him. We will immediately terminate President Obama's two illegal executive amnesties in which he defied federal law and the Constitution. So that's Trump running for president. But here he is as president. This is from a press conference in February. We are going to deal with DACA with heart. I have to deal with a lot of politicians, don't forget. And I have to convince them that what I'm saying is right. And I appreciate your understanding on that. But the DACA situation is a very, very, it's a very difficult thing for me. Because, you know, I love these kids. I love kids. I have kids

and grandkids. And I find it very, very hard doing what the law says exactly to do. And, you know, the law is rough. I'm not talking about new laws. I'm talking the existing law is very rough. It seems like Trump's trying to have it both ways here, but it seems to me like the solution is a solution that initially, at least, is angering both sides more than anything else, or certainly putting some of his allies in a really tough position. Donald Trump does not want to be seen

as someone who's kicking sympathetic kids, many of whom are in the military, in college, many of whom were hurt by Harvey in Houston, some of whom were first responders in Houston. So all of the political optics are bad for him. But he's trying to say, you know, at one point he said these kids can rest easy. He even used that term. So I think he is trying to have it both ways, and I don't see how it's possible. He is caught between his base and the rest of the country. And that's the other irony of this, because he's adding DACA to this incredible crushing list of tasks for Congress this fall, including the budget and the debt ceiling and Harvey relief and government funding and tax reform.

So it almost is no matter which way he goes, it looks like he's facing failure in the face. And with the six-month extension, taking it and dragging it into next year, which is an election year. Sue, we've been talking about how many House Republicans, especially in more competitive districts and more suburban districts, just have a fundamentally different view of this issue than President Trump and the base he has cultivated and kept returning to has. Right. And as Mara said, the president, particularly not just in this decision, but in the past month or so, has made political decisions that seem very geared towards keeping his base excited and motivated. But you have a very different competing political

motivation for Republicans who are running for reelection next year in more moderate, swing, competitive states and districts where they want to appeal to the middle. They want to appeal to independent voters. One of the first voices we heard come out in opposition to the president was a Republican from Colorado, a Republican named Mike Kaufman. And he came out immediately saying that he disagreed with the president and that it was time to pass the DREAM Act. And we've heard a number of voices along those lines from the Republican Party saying, OK, jump at the chance to codify DACA and to provide some sort of legal status for these children. This is an issue that Democrats feel very strongly about as a policy matter, thinking it gets to the heart of what they see the country as, but also as a political matter. They look at the polls, they look at their base and how much this issue energizes them, gets them passionate. Let me read a couple

of the responses that have come pouring in in just the hour or so since this decision has been official. Here's a minority leader, Chuck Schumer, in the Senate. He calls it heartless, saying the human and economic toll of rescinding DACA will be far reaching and Democrats will do everything we can to prevent President Trump's terribly wrong order from becoming reality. Kamala Harris represents California, where about a quarter of DACA recipients live. She says dreamers are Americans in every way except a piece of paper. With this decision, President Trump is telling classmates of our children they don't belong. Employees of Fortune 100 companies, they aren't welcome.

And saying to those who serve in our military and run small businesses that they should leave. You know, one of the things I think about a lot about the political dynamics on this from the Democratic perspective, as we go into a midterm election year where historically the odds are in the favor of the party that's not in power in the White House, is their job is to juice turnout in the 28 midterms among Democratic constituencies that don't normally show up in midterms, like minority voters, the president's doing Democrats a big favor with a lot of his recent decisions. If you consider where the Hispanic community thinking is right now on these issues, they see a president who has increased immigration rates, who has pardoned a very controversial sheriff, Joe Arpaio, and is now potentially ending a program that helps their children. There is a very different conversation happening among Hispanic voters right now. And if you want to make efforts to make sure that they show up,

I think President Trump is doing his part to inadvertently motivate Hispanics to show up in the 2018 midterms. I mean, the way we're talking about this in pure political terms, was this the worst possible strategy that Donald Trump could have taken up on this issue? I think he boxed himself into a corner. This has been kind of the theme of Donald Trump's whole presidency. He makes a problem of his own making. He gets himself into a box and then he can't get himself out. For instance, he now has punted this to Congress. Has he given Congress any indication of what he wants?

What is it that he wants in DACA legislation? Does he want to let them stay? What does he want? I mean, it's very, very unclear. Same thing with health care. You know, he said he wanted Obamacare repealed, never really explained what he wanted in its place. So as we've been here in the studio, President Trump sent out a statement. And I'm just going to say this is not Twitter President Trump. This is a lengthy, detailed statement. There's a lot packed in here. I'm going to read some key parts of it right now. So this is up top.

The first thing he says is, as president, my highest duty is to defend the American people and the Constitution of the United States of America. At the same time, I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents. But we must also recognize that we are a nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws. I'm going to keep going here. But right there, Mara, that is kind of what we've been talking about, the both sides here. I want to get rid of it, but there's parts to keep. Right. He doesn't. He likes these kids, as he says he loves these kids, but he thinks this is unconstitutional. All right. Back to the statement. There can be no path to principled

immigration reform if the executive branch is able to rewrite or nullify federal laws at will. Later on, before we ask what is fair to illegal immigrants, we must also ask what is fair to American families, students, taxpayers and job seekers. Congress now has the opportunity to And as he talks about that, he singles out a bill called the RAISE Act. This is from Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue. It's the bill that he had an event at the White House promoting a few weeks ago, which would limit the number of legal immigrants coming into the country and change the way that those people are picked. You know, what's interesting about this, and I want to give Donald Trump credit, he is actually saying, identifying a legislative vehicle for the DREAM Act. He says the RAISE Act. If you could put the DREAM Act with the RAISE Act, he didn't talk about the wall at all in the statement, which I also think is interesting. But that's theoretically the way you do this, comprehensive immigration reform that includes a solution for the DREAMers. And there are actually many things in the RAISE Act which democratic immigration reformers would agree with. But the RAISE Act also wants to

drastically reduce the overall number of legal immigrants to the country. And, you know, the other thing, six months from now, if Congress has not acted, there is going to be tremendous focus on every single one of these 800,000 people. I mean, you're going to see stories galore everywhere about the kinds of pressures they're under. Don't forget, every single one of these 800,000 people. I mean, you're going to see stories galore everywhere about the kinds of pressures they're under. Don't forget, every single one of these people took a leap of faith. They gave all their personal information to the government. The government knows exactly where to find them if they want to deport these DREAMers,

and they're going to be completely, totally exposed with the possibility of being sent back to countries where they might have left when they were a couple months old. Some of them don't speak the language. The optics of this will be incredibly bad for the administration. Although let's flip it around. I think that he may have also inadvertently given the Republican Party a real opportunity here. You know, let's say Congress does pass the DREAM Act or some version of that, some solution to this problem that the affected community supports. Immigration and relations with the minority community have been difficult for the Republican Party in recent elections. And if at

the end of this, the Republican Party is the party that signs the DREAM Act into law, there could be something politically redemptive in there. And I do think that that is why you saw leaders like Paul Ryan, other Republicans who have signed on to the DREAM Act, like Jeff Flake, like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who see this as a chance for the Republican Party to not only improve its image with minority voters, but convince future Hispanic voters that the Republican Party is a place for them. I mean, the deal that's been, one of the hypothetical deals that's been laid out is, oh, we'll craft a bill that says we'll protect the dreamers, but you have to fund the wall. Why Democrats would go for that one is unclear to me. And wouldn't you want to hold this back and not already play your hand if you're trying

to create some sort of deal like that? Right. I mean, you could also argue that the leverage is on the Democratic side. The Democrats could say, oh, want to raise the debt ceiling? Put DACA in there. Or you need our votes on something else? Include the Dreamers. It's pretty complex. And I don't think the White House

has thought out the political dynamics. Sue, what do you think the odds are of a serious bipartisan bill starting to develop here, given the fact that Democrats seem to be motivated? What we don't know yet, and I think will affect that decision, is where does the DACA issue fall now into the legislative agenda? It certainly wasn't on the docket for 2017 prior to

the president's decision. He has set this early March deadline for Congress to come up with a solution. Is the calculation, do Republican leaders make the calculation that it's better to solve this problem as quickly and as quietly as possible? Or do they want to stay the course and keep tax legislation the focal point of 2017? And like Congress does on many other issues, wait until you're coming up against a very punishing deadline to try and force the levers of action. History would tell us they prefer to wait until there is a pressing deadline to come up with a final compromise. They haven't made that decision yet. Lawmakers are just coming back from a very long break. I think we might get a better sense this week of where Republicans are feeling about that. We do know that Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, has sent a letter to the Speaker requesting a meeting on this issue and to see

if there is a bipartisan bill they can work on. Democrats, at least right now, are posturing that this should become the first order of business. And, you know, when you fast forward six months, what if they do wait to the last minute, as they always have in the past? What's that going to look like? We're going to be smack in the middle of the 2018 election cycle. And even though I think you can see the hand of John Kelly in the way that they set up this rescinding process, how it is very, it's a gentle glide path. In other words, some can still apply for renewal if you do it very soon. And nobody's going to be deported en masse in the next couple of months. But six months from now, everything is going to change if Congress hasn't passed that. And I think the pressure on Republicans will be even greater at that point.

And the question, too, is do they try to just address the DACA issue? Is it just the DREAM Act? Or is this an opportunity to try and pass a more sweeping immigration bill? Do they want to try and use it as a vehicle to affect legal immigration, which has been a big issue in Congress by Republicans like Tom Cotton of Arkansas? Do they want to use it to try and get money for the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border? If you open sort of the immigration door, how many issues are they going to try and squeeze through it? And we don't know the answer to that yet. So you talked about how Congress loves pressing deadlines and not acting until they show up.

One of those pressing deadlines is rapidly approaching right now. Just to give a sense of how busy the schedule is, can you give us like the rapid fire bullet point of all the things that Congress has to do right away, right now? Well, keep in mind, they only have 12 legislative days to do it. And that includes a relief package of upwards of $8 billion for Hurricane Harvey relief. They have to come up with an agreement to keep the government running, to raise the debt ceiling. They have to deal with expiring programs that affect the Federal Aviation Association, children's health care, the flood insurance program that also affects many of those affected by Harvey. And in the middle of all this, they're still trying to

come up with some kind of deal on the budget that will let them move forward on tax legislation later this year. Sue, tomorrow we see our first big vote on Harvey relief funding. What should we look for first? The House is expected to take it up first tomorrow morning, and it's expected to pass, and they're going to send it over to the Senate. The question of what may be attached to this relief package is still very much an open one. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said that the administration wants them to attach the debt limit increase onto Harvey to make sure that gets done and done quick. We

don't know how much lawmakers are going to be excited about that. We should have a better sense later in the week. And if they do decide to do that, I'm told the most likely situation is that the Senate will add that on and send it back to the House and that it could get done before the end of the month, which would be a new twist for Congress to solve a problem before the 11th hour deadline. From one Republican divide to another. All right, we'll have much more on that and everything else that happens this week in our roundup on Thursday. In between now and then, keep up with our coverage on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and on your local public radio station. And be sure to check out Up First every weekday morning.

I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.