Can 'dreamers' be deported? Sessions says it's possible, though Trump has sympathy for them
Jeff Sessions. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.
President Donald Trump has stressed that “dreamer” immigrants protected by an Obama administration program can “rest easy” and not worry about deportation. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions isn’t going that far.
President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program allowed immigrants who were brought into the country illegally as children to remain and work in the United States. The Washington Post and BuzzFeed News have stories on Sessions’ remarks.
In an interview on ABC’s This Week, Sessions said there’s no doubt that the president has sympathy for immigrants brought to the country at an early age. Sessions was asked whether those immigrants can “rest easy.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Sessions replied. “I believe that everyone that enters the country unlawfully is subject to being deported.” He added, however, that the United States doesn’t “have the ability to round up everybody,” and the administration will focus on people with criminal records.
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly stressed in an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union that dreamers are not being targeted, CNN reports.
“The president told me to do two things,” Kelly said. “He told me to secure the Southwest border—all of our borders, and, of course, focusing now on the Southwest border—and to take the worst of those that are in our country illegally, take them—look for them and deport them. So that’s what I’m doing.”
