OPINION:
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, DACA, came into being on the wings of an unconstitutional act.
That’s the core theme here — not that President Donald Trump is cruel, not that law-and-order Republicans are heartless, not even that poor innocent families may be torn apart and sent their separate ways.
DACA is unconstitutional.
Barack Obama brought the amnesty provision into being in 2012, by unilateral action, after he couldn’t get his way in Congress.
In 2014, Obama tried to expand DACA, but was rebuffed by rebelling states and court rulings.
And all this after Obama himself noted he couldn’t go it alone on immigration policy — that, as he said in 2010, “I am president, I am not king,” and that, as he said in 2011, “with respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case.”
Hmm. And yet, here we are, 800,000 or so in-country “Dreamers” later, fighting over the so-called cruelty of those who say only what Obama himself said years ago — that Congress, not the White House, ought to be in charge of immigration matters.
The left is hysterical.
In a Wednesday gathering, Senate Democrats spoke of “protecting Dreamers and their families” from the “indefensible and unjust act of cruelty against nearly 800,000 young people who trusted the American people with their hopes.” They painted the Dreamers as victims — as poor innocents who weren’t aware of their non-American citizen status until they went to apply for drivers’ licenses, or attend college, and then and only then saw their dreams “ripped” from their sad little fingers. That’s hardly their sole theatrics.
All week, in fact, Democrats have been tripping over themselves to be among the first to slam the White House for cruelty.
Sen. Kamala Harris, in a written statement, called Trump’s DACA decision “a cruel betrayal” to Dreamers.
Rep. Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat, blasted Trump in one tweet for a “morally bankrupt move” and in another, for “heartlessness.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer tweeted the end of DACA as we know it “heartless.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called Trump “an affront” to Americans. Sen. Patty Murray said ending DACA “flies in the face of our nation’s core values.” Sen. Ted Lieu called Trump “super cruel.”
Obama weighed in, writing in a Facebook post of the end of DACA as “cruel.” Bill Clinton called the decision “to send these young people to places many of them have never lived and do not know” as “cruel.” Joe Biden tweeted: “Brought by parents, these children had no choice in coming here. Now they’ll be sent to countries they’ve never known. Cruel.”
Starting to see the theme here?
But ’lest we forget: Trump didn’t call for mass deportations of illegals. Rather, he took the unconstitutional act called DACA and gave it a constitutional twist. He took Obama’s executive overreach and put it in the hands of the legislative branch, where it rightly belongs, to solve. And he gave congressional members six full months to come up with a solution.
If anybody’s “cruel” in this scenario, it’s Obama. ’Lest we forget this, too: Trump didn’t bring these Dreamers to America. Obama did.
What kind of president telecasts to the world that America’s borders are OK for crossing by unaccompanied minors — if only they can safely navigate the drug cartel criminals, the rapists, the thugs who set up shop at the borders, that is? Answer: Obama.
And what kind of president does that knowing these illegals, once on American soil, have no guarantee in future White Houses that they can stay? Answer, once again: Obama.
But Obama, driven by amnesty goals, used these youth for political purposes — and now similarly minded open-border loving Democrats are exploiting these same Dreamers and their families to score more partisan points, by hitting Trump for heartlessness when all he’s doing is returning to a state of law and order.
No, if anyone in this whole DACA debacle is “cruel,” it’s not Trump — it’s Obama.
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