The Trump administration finally rescinded one of the primary components of President Obama’s unilateral immigration actions from 2014, officially scrapping the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents Program, better known as “DAPA.”
The DAPA Program would have granted temporary (unlikely) amnesty to illegal aliens with U.S.-born children, along with the parents of illegal alien kids who’d benefitted from Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program.
The program had been put on hold for the past several years as 26 states challenged it in court.
In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly announced the Trump administration wouldn’t be moving forward with the program “because there is no credible path forward to litigate the currently enjoined policy."
Probably because the program, launched via an executive action by Obama, flew in the face of current federal immigration law.
While the DAPA Program also extended DACA work permits from two years to three – an extension that’s been rescinded, now that DAPA is dead – the Trump administration has so far elected to keep DACA in place. (For those who don’t recall, DACA is an Obama-era executive program that allows illegal aliens who were brought to the United States as children to obtain that same amnesty deal, including getting work permits, Social Security numbers, and driver’s licenses. Pew Research estimates more than 750,000 undocumented young adults, better known as 'DREAMers,' have received deportation relief under the program.)
Kelly’s statement on the demise of DAPA also included the line: “The June 15, 2012 memorandum that created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program will remain in effect.”
The Center for Immigration Studies ran the numbers on the latest data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and found that an average of 192 illegal aliens are being newly approved for DACA benefits every day under President Trump, who ran his campaign on a strict anti-illegal immigration platform.
According to the most recent numbers, USCIS approved 107,524 DACA renewals and 17,275 new applications in the first three months of this year alone, about 78 percent of which occurred under a newly inaugurated President Trump.