President Barack Obama issued a 2012 executive order protecting from deportation more than 700,000 young people brought illegally to this country by their parents. An appeals court blocked the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, and the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked, which let that ruling stand.
President-elect Donald Trump's immigration plan states he would "immediately terminate President Obama's two illegal executive amnesties." If Trump were to revoke DACA, an estimated 4,000 Pima County residents who crossed the border illegally before they were 16 years old would find their futures in jeopardy.
Under DACA, "Dreamers" were eligible to avoid deportation for two years — and that was renewable — if they stayed out of legal trouble, were studying or graduated from high school, or served honorably in the military.
If Trump revokes the program, the roughly 27,000 Arizona residents who have DACA deferrals and another 19,000 whose deferrals were renewed as of March, would lose their driver's licenses and their ability to work legally in the United States.
Undocumented students at the University of Arizona or Pima Community College could see their tuition rise enough to put it out of reach altogether. Both schools let DACA students pay in-state tuition — but without DACA protection they would be subject to an Arizona law that denies in-state tuition to undocumented students.
Beyond all that, their greatest fear is that the information they provided on their DACA application could be used to round them up and deport them.
Not only could Trump rescind DACA with a stroke of a pen, he also could undo a 2014 executive action that offered similar protection to about 5 million more undocumented young people and to the parents of U.S. citizens or legal residents.
A Trump nominee to the Supreme Court also could do the job for him. The 2014 action was blocked by the courts and a deadlocked eight-member Supreme Court.
