President Donald Trump’s immigration actions, announced Tuesday, included new White House guidelines detailing what immigrants are eligible for immediate deportation. However, they did not address repeals or even rollbacks of former President Barack Obama’s landmark immigration policies for children and young adults.
The news came as a relief to hundreds of thousands of childhood immigrants who enrolled in the former administration’s reforms, as well as the majority of Americans who support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants – until White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer revealed Tuesday’s policy roll out only includes the “first to go” in Trump’s deportation efforts.
Students form a human chain during a protest against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, and to call for unity, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico Feb. 17, 2017. Photo: Reuters
Trump’s new immigration plans to add thousands of new Customs and Border Protection agents to the federal agency, increase detention center populations and increase the flow of deporting all migrants crossing the border into Mexico regardless of their native nation became the topic of several contentious questions during Spicer’s daily press briefing Tuesday.
The administration was careful to note that, while Department of Homeland Security memos officially released this week clearly stated immigrants enrolled in Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Applicants were not included in new qualifications for deportation, they weren’t excluded from potential upcoming expansions to current policy.
“Everyone that is here illegally is subject to removal,” Spicer told reporters Tuesday. “What’s important to note, more than anything, is that this order does not address [DREAMers].”
Obama laid out a series of immigration reform executive orders in 2014, including actions to protect those who illegally crossed into the U.S. as children, announcing his administration would only seek to deport “felons, not families.”
“We’ll prioritize, just like law enforcement does every day,” Obama said at the time. “If you meet the criteria, you can come out of the shadows and get right with the law. If you’re a criminal, you’ll be deported. If you plan to enter the U.S. illegally, your chances of getting caught and sent back just went up.”
New immigration policies would continue to be released in the weeks and months to come, Spicer stressed Tuesday. They included potential changes that could effectively make those undocumented childhood immigrants subject to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids enveloping the nation.
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