The Department of Homeland Security announced last night that it was rescinding an Obama administration program aimed at protecting some immigrant parents from deportation, but would leave in place the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provides deportation relief for some undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), one of the leading groups advocating for severe immigration restrictions, used its Twitter account to praise the cancellation of the parents’ program, DAPA, which had never been fully implemented. But it added: “Trump must terminate DACA as well – both are ‘an illegal executive overreach.’”
FAIR applauds end of DAPA. Trump must terminate DACA as well – both are “an illegal executive overreach.”
— FAIR (@FAIRImmigration) June 16, 2017
Ending DAPA and DACA were two of the priorities that FAIR had laid out in an ambitiously cruel wish list for Trump’s first month’s in office, including ending the constitutional protection of birthright citizenship, cracking down on sanctuary cities and cutting off undocumented immigrants from nearly all government services.
Since then, the group has been pressuring Trump to keep his freewheeling anti-immigrant campaign promises, including ending both deferred-action programs. On its website, the group is keeping track of Trump’s campaign promises; it lists cancelling “unconstitutional executive orders” as a “broken promise”:
FAIR, which is the most prominent of the web of anti-immigration groups founded by John Tanton, an activist whose interest in immigration restriction is tied up with an interest in white nationalism, has plenty of ways to get its message to the Trump administration. FAIR has had a close relationship with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom DHS says consulted with Secretary John Kelly on the end of the DAPA program, and its former Executive Director, Julie Kirchner, now holds a top DHS position.
NumbersUSA, another Tanton group, similarly celebrated the DAPA news as Trump fulfilling a one of his “key campaign promises,” while noting that he had also promised DACA repeal.
