Washington: President Donald Trump is promising new executive action on immigration as he returns to the defining issue of his administration. But Trump has offered contradictory and confusing statements about his plans in recent days.
His comments come after the Supreme Court rejected his efforts to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which protects young immigrants brought to the country as children.
Trump said last month that he would quickly be filing paperwork to address the court’s concerns, but has yet to make a move.
The latest confusion about Trump’s thinking started with a Telemundo interview earlier this month in which the president said he would soon be signing an immigration bill” a very good bill and merit-based bill and that one of the aspects of the bill is going to be DACA.” “We’re going to have a road to citizenship, he added.
The problem: No such bill exists to sign and there is zero appetite in Congress to wade into the divisive issue with four months to go before the election and in the middle of a pandemic.
Elsewhere in the interview, Trump said he would instead be signing a big executive order that would include DACA.
But, we put it in, and we’ll probably going to then be taking it out. We’re working out the legal complexities right now, but I’m going to be signing a very major immigration bill as an executive order,” he said.
White House spokesman Judd Deere quickly tried to walk back the meandering comments, saying that Trump was working on an executive order to establish a merit-based immigration system to further protect U.S. workers.”
Trump, he added, has long said he is willing to work with Congress on a negotiated legislative solution to DACA” one he said could include citizenship but not “amnesty. Trump apparently did not get the message. (AP)