Travel is stressful for many people, especially around the holiday season. But dealing with TSA lines or uncomfortable flights is petty nonsense compared to the possibility of not being allowed back into the country. And that is a very real possibility for the 741,000 people who, thanks to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, might find that they aren’t allowed back into the country if they are traveling when President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20.
DACA allowed immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children to be afforded many of the opportunities of citizens born here. An operational memo put into place by President Obama in 2012, DACA was premised on the idea that, even if they didn’t come to the country legally, it was hard to hold children responsible for that. DACA was one of several programs put into place by the Obama administration to help people in the country illegally become legal immigrants who were allowed to stay.
But Trump made illegal immigration a big part of his campaign, vowing to build a wall along the Mexican border to and deport millions of people. He even blamed illegal immigrant voters for the lead that Hillary Clinton earned in the popular vote. Thus, it is reasonable to think that Trump might do something drastic, like wipe out DACA with a similar operational memo as early as inauguration day.
But in a recent Time magazine interview, Trump said he was sympathetic toward the plight of people in the DACA program. “We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud,” he said. “They got brought here at a very young age, they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here … And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Nonetheless, immigration lawyers and universities, are suggesting that people who are part of DACA be sure that they return to the United States before January 20, just to be safe. Though Trump has called DACA “illegal” itself, he has not clarified what, if any, actual steps he will take to address immigration reform once he gets into office. That lack of information is giving a lot of people reason to worry.