WASHINGTON”•President Donald Trump on Tuesday ended an amnesty that protected from deportation 800,000 people brought to the United States illegally as minors.
“I am here today to announce that the program known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama Administration is being rescinded,” Trump’s attorney general Jeff Sessions said.
Sessions argued the amnesty put in place by former president Barack Obama was unconstitutional and “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs.”
Mexico condemned Trump’s decision to end the amnesty for thousands of people brought illegally to the United States as children, expressing “deep worry” for the uncertainty they now face.
“Mexico deeply regrets the cancellation” of the program known as DACA, President Enrique Pena Nieto said in a tweet.
“The Mexican government will urge US authorities to find a swift, permanent solution that gives legal certainty to the young people of DACA,” he wrote.
Trump announced that the permits issued under the program would be gradually phased out as they expire over the next six to 24 months.
He left it up to Congress to draft an immigration reform to address the legal situation of some 800,000 people formerly protected from deportation under the program, implemented by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Some 625,000 Mexicans are protected under DACA, according to the Mexican foreign ministry.
Pena Nieto said they would be welcomed “with open arms” in Mexico if they ended up being deported to the country of their birth, where many have barely ever lived.
Mexico has a “moral imperative” to lobby the Trump administration and Congress to quickly resolve the legal gray area, Mexico’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Sada told a press conference.
“There is no question that setting immigration policy in the United States is the exclusive role of the American people and their institutions,” the foreign ministry said.
“However, our country cannot ignore the fact that thousands of young people born in Mexico will likely be affected by today’s decision.”
The issue of Mexican immigration to the United States has strained relations between the two neighbors since Trump took office, along with his vows to make Mexico pay for a wall on the border.
Trump’s decision sparked protests in Mexico. On Monday night, some 20 women held a prayer vigil in the northern city of Tijuana against the imminent end of DACA, gathering along the border at a spot where there is already a metal barrier between the two countries.
Another small group protested outside the US embassy in Mexico City on Tuesday.
Among them was recently deported mother Maria Jimenez, 40, whose daughter, Brenda Guadarrama, remained in the US under DACA.
Now 20 years old, Guadarrama has lived in the United States since she was two. Since her mother was sent back to Mexico four months ago, she has had to support her three younger siblings.
“My daughter fought hard to study and get ahead…. She is one of the millions of young people who have done nothing but fight for a better future,” Jimenez told AFP.
The legal limbo, she said, “is agony.”
“It’s as if they told you that tomorrow you were going to die.”
