On Sunday, two cabinet members in the Trump administration appeared to back away from one of President Donald Trump’s promises, made during last year’s election campaign. Trump promised that he would end the deferred action program implemented via executive action by his predecessor, Barack Obama, which protects from the threat of deportation undocumented immigrants who came to the US as minors.
John Kelly, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said that so-called ‘DREAMers’ are not being targeted by the Trump administration when he was interviewed on the CNN program, State of the Union. In a different interview for This Week on ABC, Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, also noted that rounding up all undocumented immigrants was not within the ability of the US government, but insisted the country needed a much more exacting immigration policy.
Kelly acknowledged that such individuals are, “caught between the law” and said that Trump was obviously sympathetic to their situation. But, he expressed a wish that the US Congress could be the ones to deal with such issues. Sessions made a similar comment on ABC, also reiterating that the criminal element within undocumented immigrants remained the primary priority of the Trump administration’s crackdown.
In February, Trump promised to bring ‘heart’ to his approach to the deferred action program, calling DREAMers ‘incredible kids’. On Friday, the President informed the Associated Press that his agenda was to go after criminals, not DREAMers and that those affected by the program could ‘rest easy’.