According to reports released today from McClatchy DC and Fox News (via Splinter), Donald Trump is getting ready to announce that he’ll be ending President Obama’s Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals program, which protects undocumented immigrants from being deported if they were brought to the U.S. as children. Ever a benevolent ruler, though, Trump is expected to let current beneficiaries—called “Dreamers”—to stay in the country until their permits run out, which his supporters will surely frame as “compassionate” even though the “compassionate” thing would be to let them stay in the United States.
This report comes as 10 states have threatened to sue the federal government over DACA (because they are also jerks), with insiders saying that Trump might as well take credit for ending the program if it’s going to end anyway. That makes Trump sound kind of passive in this move, as if it were simply a “business decision,” but that reasoning only makes sense if you ignore literally everything else about Donald Trump and his disastrous, spiteful, and overtly racist presidency. If Trump ends DACA, it’s not to avoid a lawsuit from those 10 states and it’s not because he promised his idiot supporters he would, it’s because it was a major thing that Obama accomplished and because it’s a program that helps people.
That being said, there is a slim chance that he won’t end it. During a press briefing today, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders continued her predecessors’ streak of constantly denying every report about Trump by claiming that he hasn’t made any final decisions about what do with DACA. She also wouldn’t confirm that Trump plans to let current DACA recipients stay for a while, though, so there’s really no way to tell what’s going on.
[Note: Splinter, like The A.V. Club, is owned by Univision Communications.]