Thousands Likely to Lose US Work Permits as President Trump Decides to End Obama's DACA Program

Sources within the White House say that President Donald Trump has already made a decision to bring to an end the Obama-era program that grants work permits to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US as children, the Politico reports.

Senior White House aides are said to have met on Sunday afternoon to deliberate on how to rollout the new decision that is likely to ignite a political firestorm — and fulfill one of the Trump’s main campaign promises.

There has been open resistance by some members of President Trump's Republican Party over attempts to scrap the program introduced by his predecessor.

Sources said that Trump's conversations with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who argued that Congress - rather than the executive branch - is responsible for writing immigration law, helped persuade him to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA program and kick the issue to Congress.

A White House official said that Trump plans to delay the enforcement of the new decision for six months to give the Congress a window to act. A senior White House aide said that chief of staff John Kelly, who has been running the West Wing policy process on the issue, “thinks Congress should’ve gotten its act together a lot longer ago.”

Another source said that President Trump is expected to officially make the announcement on Tuesday, and the White House had informed House Speaker Paul Ryan of the president’s decision on Sunday morning. In a radio interview last Friday, Ryan said he didn’t think the president Trump should terminate DACA, and that Congress should act on the issue.

Trump's decision is likely to shore up his base, which rallied behind him on importance of enforcing the country’s immigration laws and securing the border during his campaigns and, at the same time, become one of the most controversial decisions, opposed by leaders of both parties and by the political establishment more broadly.

The White House and Congress have been engaging in a push-pull game over who is responsible for determining the fate of over 800,000 undocumented immigrants who are enjoying DACA.

A section of Republican lawmakers, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio argued that Congress needs to pass a law to protect those under DACA. “My hope is that as part of this process we can work on a way to deal with this issue and solve it through legislation, which is the right way to do it and the constitutional way to do it,” Rubio told CNN in June.