A plan touted by President Trump’s top aides to legalize the nearly 800,000 illegal aliens currently protected by an Obama-era amnesty program would include giving gang members and criminals a path to United States citizenship, experts argue.
The White House is reportedly eyeing an immigration deal that would give amnesty to illegal aliens currently covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which candidate Trump blasted on the campaign trail.
In exchange for the DACA amnesty, the Trump base would see funding for a border wall, the passing of the legal immigration-cutting RAISE Act, and mandatory E-Verify, among other things.
The legalization of all DACA recipients, often referred to as DREAMers, would include giving gang members and criminal illegal aliens a pathway to U.S. citizenship, as the screening process for DACA has proven minuscule, immigration hawks argue.
“We know that the DACA recipients were not screened well,” Center for Immigration Studies Director of Policy Jessica Vaughan told Breitbart Texas. “Most of [the DREAMers] were not even interviewed. We also know that many people who received DACA should not have.”
Under the Obama Administration’s screening standards, illegal aliens with criminal backgrounds, even convicted felons, were still able to receive DACA protections, despite the public safety risk they caused.
Vaughan says “hundreds of known gang members” have received DACA, as well as illegal aliens who got involved in gang activity after they received the status.
Most recently, three illegal alien gang members who were arrested by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency were revealed to have been given protected status under DACA, Breitbart Texas reported.
In a report by the Seattle Times, DHS officials revealed that since DACA’s inception, more than 1,500 DREAMers saw their statuses revoked due to involvement in gangs or other crimes.
Vaughan states that the federal government has never released data on how many DACA recipients do not speak English, take public assistance, how many are working, and even how old they are.
“We know nothing about the DACA population,” Vaughan told Breitbart Texas. “The American people deserve to know who the DACA recipients are before we do anything on legalizing them.”
Despite campaigning on the promise to shutter DACA, Trump has yet to cease issuing protection statuses.
Before Trump took office, the Obama Administration rushed to grant DACA statuses, ballooning the number of illegal aliens given the protection to more than 120,000 in his last three months in office, Breitbart Texas reported.
Trump added more than 125,000 illegal aliens to the DACA rolls in his first four months in office, Breitbart News reported. According to a POLITICO report, Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwarzman pushed Trump to keep DACA.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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