Joe Biden will be meeting with almost a dozen Democratic lawmakers on Thursday to discuss ways to possible salvage the executive amnesty program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), according to The Hill.
The report first came from Axios, which said that Biden will be meeting with five senators and six representatives. The senators consist of Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). The representatives who will be in attendance are Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), and Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.). Just over half of the members in attendance are all from the state of California, which has the highest population of illegal aliens in the country.
The meeting will ostensibly focus on possible responses to a ruling by a federal judge in early July which struck down the DACA program as unconstitutional. Judge Andrew Hanen, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, determined that DACA had been implemented in an unconstitutional manner and could no longer accept new applicants; his ruling did not impact current or past applicants.
DACA was an executive order signed by then-President Barack Obama in 2012 granting blanket amnesty to illegal aliens who arrived in the United States as minors. He had previously attempted to get a bill passed through Congress to address this issue, known as the DREAM Act. When the bill failed in Congress, Obama instead largely implemented the exact same law via the executive order, which was the primary reason for the law’s unconstitutionality.
Biden referred to the ruling as “deeply disappointing,” and vowed to have his Department of Justice resist the decision. He called on Congress to “pass the American Dream and Promise Act,” calling it his “fervent hope that through reconciliation or other means, Congress will finally provide security to all Dreamers, who have lived too long in fear.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) similarly vowed to “do everything we can to provide a path to citizenship for the Dreamers and many others,” and justified this push by falsely claiming that “immigrants are great for America.”